Refinement, Evaluation, and Dissemination of the Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) Program

Executive functions such as organization and planning skills are critical for success in the school setting. The importance of these skills increases across development as academic demands intensify along with expectations that students demonstrate autonomy in managing their academic responsibilities. Many students with disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) exhibit deficits in executive functions. In the school setting, difficulties with organization and planning manifest as forgetting to complete and losing homework assignments and procrastination with projects and studying for tests. Homework provides a unique opportunity and context for schools to teach students to implement and refine organization and planning skills before academic impairment becomes significant. 

Multiple interventions have been developed to address the organization and planning deficits of students with DBD. Unfortunately, although these programs have demonstrated efficacy, few have been widely disseminated. This may be because the interventions are complex and require substantial training and resources to implement. An IES treatment development study was completed with the primary goal of developing an intervention targeting organization and planning skills that could be widely disseminated into school settings. Through a systematic process of collaboration with school mental health (SMH) providers, the Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) intervention was developed. Parents, SMH providers, and adolescents participated in a series of focus groups and intervention implementation activities and provided input on ways to ensure that the HOPS treatment manual was user friendly and feasible for dissemination into school settings. 

The resulting intervention consists of 16 meetings implemented during the school day with each meeting lasting no longer than 20 minutes. Multiple intervention delivery models were developed to be utilized based upon the schools’ needs and resources, including individual, small group, classroom-based, and school-wide. Further, the manual provides specific session by session instructions and can be implemented without consultation from experts. At this point, the HOPS intervention is being disseminated and is currently used independently in hundreds of schools. This presentation will describe the development and dissemination process and report on outcome data from two randomized controlled trials, including preliminary findings from a large IES efficacy trial comparing HOPS to an active homework support control condition.