Literature on postsecondary disability services: A call for research guidelines.

Support services for students with disabilities is now a distinct field of practice in higher education, with a significant increase in the number of students receiving services, programs to serve them, and professionals who oversee the programs. The field has professional and program standards, a code of ethics, and a disability service specific professional organization. Correspondingly, an extensive corpus of professional literature has emerged. However, though the research base has great breadth, it lacks significant depth, has poor sample and setting descriptions, and lacks methodological rigor. The result is that there is insufficient evidence spelling out what practices work with which students and in which settings. Guidelines intended to steer future research could have significant impact upon scholars conducting research and, subsequently, higher education. The present article describes the current state of the research base and proposes future directions to guide research.