Association for Behavior Analysis International

The Performance Diagnostic Checklist (PDC) is a tool developed to identify the environmental variables that affect poor employee performance. Research has supported the utility of the PDC across a variety of settings and, more recently, the Performance Diagnostic Checklist – Human Services (PDC-HS) was created to address the need for such a tool specifically in human services settings. We identified three staff members that exhibited a need for improvement in their performance during in-home applied behavior analysis sessions. The PDC-HS was administered with 2 supervisors to assess the variables that may have affected poor performance in the area of functional communication training by staff that those supervisors were responsible for. The PDC-HS identified that Behavioral Skills Training (BST) would be an appropriate intervention for all participants. BST was evaluated to determine its effectiveness in improving employee performance. Data collection is ongoing, but the initial results suggest that BST may be effective and that other intervention components may be needed for individual staff.

Within the human services field, staff are required to do a variety of tasks while still caring for children. High levels of fidelity across tasks is essential to student outcomes. Self-monitoring coupled with supervision has been effective in managing staff performance (Richmond, Riordan, Reiss, Pyles, and Baily, 1988). The current study examined the impact of self-monitoring and supervisory checks on the completion of IEP objectives across two classrooms. During baseline, focus sheets were provided to staff in the absence of self-monitoring or supervisory checks. Moderate levels of completion were observed across both classrooms. During intervention, staff were required to record completed IEP objectives on a focus sheet across each student. Staff then computed the percentage of completed programs over the week period and turned in focus sheets to the supervisor. Results of the intervention indicated that self-monitoring and supervisory checks are adequate to improve and maintain high rates of IEP completion. Levels of completion again dropped during a reversal phase. Interobserver agreement was conducted across 71% of sessions and averaged 100%. Future investigations might include a component analysis to see if self-monitoring alone or systematic fading of supervisory checks would maintain high levels of completion.

Behavior Skills Training (BST) has been demonstrated to be an effective method in training staff to perform skills with high fidelity in a relatively short amount of time. In the current study, three components of Direct Instruction (DI) were trained using BST. The participants were two classroom instructors with prior experience implementing DI with students with autism. The targets for staff training were accuracy with signal delivery, error correction, and reinforcer delivery. BST was provided to the participants for each component skill and a multiple baseline design across skills was used to evaluate the effects of BST. Generalization probes were conducted with a student with autism during baseline and after mastery with each skill was demonstrated. BST rapidly increased staff performance across skills with generalization demonstrated during classroom probes. This study extends the use of BST to implementation of DI and the results suggest that BST delivered in role-play scenarios resulted in improved teacher performance of the targeted skills in generalization probes with students.

Burnout literature remains inconclusive due to variable methods and few study/result replications (Skirrow & Hatton, 2007). The purposes of this systematic review were threefold: 1) to determine the trend of direct care staff (staff) burnout since 2004; 2) to identify and review the correlates of burnout and effective treatment interventions and; 3) to identify the current gaps in the literature. This systematic review followed the inclusion criteria and graphing procedures by Skirrow and Hatton (2007). The 37 studies included mean subscale scores from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996), recruited staff who worked directly with adults with disabilities, and were written in English. Results show that personal accomplishment (M = 32.22; range = 4.88-43.7) has increased, emotional exhaustion (M = 17.19; range = 2.09-28.12) has remained stable, and depersonalization (M = 4.74; range = 0.67-11.1) has decreased since 2004. These results suggest that burnout among staff has decreased overtime. Further analyses are still in progress, therefore correlates, effective treatments, gaps, and future directions for research will be discussed on the poster. Understanding correlates of burnout, effective treatment strategies, and gaps in the literature is important to develop a best practice for preventing and treating burnout in staff.

The purpose of this study was to train a behavior therapist to code video examples of the primary verbal operants (e.g. mand, tact, echoic, and intraverbal). Using Train to Code© software, the participant progressed through an automated seven-level training program which systematically faded out prompts. Pre-test and post-test consisted of a printed worksheet with 32 statements in multiple choice format. Prior to beginning coding, the participant was exposed to definitions (e.g. auditory and textual) for each operant. During training, the participant responded by coding each video exemplar with a keystroke and the software automatically advanced and remediated training levels according to set criteria. Pre-test results indicated the participant was able to code mand and echoic statements with 100% accuracy, but only 32% accuracy on tact and intraverbal trials. Training results, thus far, demonstrated that the participant accurately coded 262 of 337 trials (78% accuracy) across the first three faded prompt levels across two sessions. A post-test probe after level 3 suggested modest improvement with tact and intraverbal coding (50% accuracy) and continued demonstration of 100% accuracy on mand and echoic exemplars. Preliminary results provide implications for the efficacy of automated training programs to teach behavior analytic concepts.