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Missouri Prevention Science Institute

EIS Evidence

We have pub­lished ten papers that sup­port the tech­ni­cal ade­qua­cy of the EIS. We have also described the EIS Mod­el in six publications.

In 2020, we pub­lished a paper demon­strat­ing the impact of the full EIS mod­el on stu­dents in schools that imple­ment the mod­el well ver­sus those in school with low imple­men­ta­tion. In this study, we inves­ti­gat­ed pat­terns of stu­dent social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral risk over time among a com­mu­ni­ty sam­ple (N=16,782 stu­dents; 54 schools; 6 dis­tricts) of 3rd through 12th grade stu­dents. We found the following:

  1. Social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral prob­lems declined across nine time­points over a 3‑year period.
  2. High-qual­i­ty imple­men­ta­tion of the EIS mod­el was asso­ci­at­ed with more adap­tive stu­dent risk pat­terns over a three-year period.
  3. Stu­dents with high­er or increas­ing prob­lems over time were more like­ly to be from schools with low­er fideli­ty to the EIS model.

 

In anoth­er study (in prepa­ra­tion), we found that stu­dents in schools where the EIS has been imple­ment­ed for sev­er­al years were report­ing much low­er men­tal health risk over time com­pared to youth across Mis­souri and the nation.  First, nation­al trends indi­cate that youth men­tal health con­cerns have been ris­ing expo­nen­tial­ly for the past decade but not so for youth EIS schools. The nation­al wors­en­ing trends accel­er­at­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. As one exam­ple, in their bian­nu­al sum­ma­ry of youth well-being the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC) found that 57% of high school girls across the coun­try report­ed per­sis­tent sad­ness or hope­less­ness (see Fig­ure 1). This was up from 36% in 2011. In sharp con­trast, both boys and girls in EIS schools report­ed sad­ness or hope­less­ness from 2017–2021; only 7% of girls report­ed these feel­ings in 2021 down from 12% in 2017 (see Fig­ure 2).

 

Sec­ond, direct com­par­isons between youth in our EIS rur­al schools (n=3,905) ver­sus youth in oth­er Mis­souri rur­al schools (n=3631) showed the same trends. The school and stu­dent demo­graph­ics between these two groups were near­ly iden­ti­cal.  In fact, youth in EIS schools had half the risk of severe inter­nal­iz­ing or exter­nal­iz­ing prob­lems com­pared to the peers in non-EIS schools. More­over, when we exam­ined youth with severe scores on these indi­ca­tors (95th per­centile or high­er), youth in EIS schools fared far bet­ter than their peers on every EIS scale (see Fig­ure 3). In fact, on the inter­nal­iz­ing indi­ca­tor, EIS youth had half the risk of report­ing severe inter­nal­iz­ing or exter­nal­iz­ing prob­lems com­pared to these peers. Like­wise, EIS rur­al school boys and girls were one-third and one-half as like­ly to report prob­lems with sad­ness or hope­less­ness, respec­tive­ly (see Fig­ure 4).

Sup­port­ing Studies

Her­man, K. C. & Boni­fay, W. (2023) Best prac­tices for exam­in­ing the social con­se­quences of edu­ca­tion­al mea­sures. School Psy­chol­o­gy, 38, 129–136.

Her­man, K. C., Reinke, W. M., Thomp­son, A., Huang, F., Owens, S. (2023). Usabil­i­ty and social con­se­quences of the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem as a uni­ver­sal screen­er for social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral risks. School Psy­chol­o­gy, 38, 148–159.

Her­man, K. C., Reinke, W. M., Huang, F. L., Thomp­son, A.M., & Doyle-Bak­er, L. (2021). Inves­ti­gat­ing the psy­cho­me­t­ric prop­er­ties of the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem – Stu­dent Report in a mid­dle school sam­ple.School Psy­chol­o­gy, 36, 34–46.

Her­man, K. C., Reinke, W. M., & Thomp­son, A. (2020). Pre­ven­tion sci­ence as a plat­form for solv­ing major soci­etal prob­lems and improv­ing pop­u­la­tion health. Jour­nal of Pre­ven­tion and Health Pro­mo­tion, 1, 131–151.

Her­man, K.C., Reinke, W., Thomp­son, A., Haw­ley, K. (2019). The Mis­souri Pre­ven­tion Cen­ter: A mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach to reduc­ing the soci­etal preva­lence and bur­den of youth men­tal health prob­lems. Amer­i­can Psy­chol­o­gist, 74, 315–328.

Her­man, K. C., Reinke, W. M., Thomp­son, A., Haw­ley, K., & Stor­mont, M. (2021). Reduc­ing the soci­etal preva­lence and bur­den of youth men­tal health prob­lems:  Lessons learned and next steps. School Psy­chol­o­gy Review, 50, 122–130

Her­man, K. C., Reinke, W. M., Thomp­son, A., Haw­ley, K., Wal­lis, K., Stor­mont, M., & Peters, C. (2021). A pub­lic health approach to reduc­ing the soci­etal preva­lence and bur­den of youth men­tal health prob­lems: Intro­duc­tion to the Spe­cial Issue. School Psy­chol­o­gy Review, 50, 8–16.

Huang, F., Reinke, W. M., Thomp­son, A., & Her­man, K. C. (2019). Fac­tor struc­ture of the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion System—Student report. Jour­nal of Psy­choe­d­u­ca­tion­al Assess­ment, 37, 473–485.

Reinke, W.M., Her­man, K. C., Thomp­son, A., McCall, C., Copeland, C., Holmes, S., & Owens, S. (2021). Inves­ti­gat­ing the lon­gi­tu­di­nal asso­ci­a­tion between fideli­ty to a large-scale com­pre­hen­sive school men­tal health pre­ven­tion and inter­ven­tion mod­el and stu­dent out­comes. School Psy­chol­o­gy Review, 50, 17–29.

Reinke, W. M., Her­man, K. C., Huang, F., McCall, C., Holmes, S., Thomp­son, A., & Owens, S. (2022). Exam­in­ing the fac­tor struc­ture and con­cur­rent and pre­dic­tive valid­i­ty of the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem – Stu­dent Report in an ele­men­tary school sam­ple. Jour­nal of School Psy­chol­o­gy, 90, 114–134.

Reinke, W. M., Thomp­son, A., Her­man, K. C., Holmes, S., Owens, S., Cohen, D., Tan­ner-Jones, L., Hen­ry, L., Green, A., & Copeland, C. (2018). The Coun­ty Schools Men­tal Health Coali­tion: A mod­el for com­mu­ni­ty lev­el impact. School Men­tal Health, 10, 173–180.

Thomp­son, A., Her­man, K. C., Reinke, W. M., Huang, F., Eddy, C., & Doyle-Bak­er, L. (2021). Exam­in­ing the fac­tor struc­ture and con­cur­rent and pre­dic­tive valid­i­ty of the Ear­ly Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem – Stu­dent Report in a high school sam­ple. School Men­tal Health, 13, 28–40.

Thomp­son, A., Reinke, W.M., Holmes, S., & Her­man, K. C. (2017). The Coun­ty School Men­tal Health Coali­tion: A mod­el for a sys­tem­at­ic approach to sup­port­ing youth. Chil­dren and Schools, 39, 209–218.