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Special education researchers, practitioners, and policy makers continue to work toward developing and implementing empirically supported practices and policies to address the academic, social, and postschool challenges confronting students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The systematic review has become an essential vehicle for compiling and disseminating research findings on an array of topics. Given the importance and impact of these research summaries, it is instructive to take stock of the extent to which reviews in our field adhere to current standards. Drawing from a number of sources in the social and behavioral sciences, we propose and describe a series of quality indicators for systematic reviews. We applied these indicators to systematic reviews published in Behavioral Disorders between 2005 and 2016 with the broader goal of identifying areas of methodological strength and areas for improvement. Results indicate that the sample of systematic reviews demonstrated particular strength in several procedural domains such as the specification of inclusion criteria, identifying the electronic databases used for the search, and describing the plan for data analysis. We also identified a number of areas to which researchers might devote greater attention to increase the rigor of systematic reviews in the field. Findings are contextualized within the importance of research transparency and reporting to improve practice and policy. Keywords emotional and behavioral disorders, quality indicators, meta-analysis, systematic review Research question Research question formulation The research question communicates the objectives and provides boundaries for making decisions about which studies to include in the systematic review. Eligibility criteria Variable characteristics Operational characteristics of the variables that will be the focus of the review are described with examples of key variables such as the interventions, assessments, programs, practices, or policies of interest. Participant information Key participant information is reported including any disability, demographic, and/or functional characteristics that define the student population. Research design The research designs eligible for the review are identified with key methods operationalized if necessary. Time period The time period in which the research had to be published to be eligible was identified. Search procedures Databases identified The electronic reference databases searched were referenced directly. Registries identified The prospective research registries searched were referenced directly. Unpublished sources The authors reported whether unpublished studies were included in the search. Keywords identified Keywords used to search reference databases and registries were explicitly identified. Search date The date on which the final search was conducted was reported. Hand search conducted

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This descriptive analysis of policy content examined local school district policies on physical restraint and seclusion in one Midwestern state that did not have state legislation on these topics to determine whether districts had policies and, if so, whether their content included recommended principles from the U.S. Department of Education. No previous research has addressed district policies. A maximum variation sample of 90 districts was examined to determine whether policies were in place, whether recommended principles were included, and whether policies varied based on student enrollment. Although almost all districts had policies, many of the federally recommended principles were not addressed across the sample and less than 10% of the district policies indicated that these procedures should only be used in the case of imminent danger of serious injury to self or others. District enrollment size did not affect policy, but the substance of the policy was determined by the districts’ policy source from advising attorneys.