Association for Behavior Analysis International

In order to tackle food waste in restaurants, we set up an intervention in a bistrot of Milano and Oslo to increase the demand of foodie bags. While usually clients have to actively ask the waiters to packing their leftovers, in this experiment the default rule was manipulated to automatically provide the clients with a foodie bag, unless they actively choose to opt-out. In the first two weeks, the demanded rate of doggy bags was measured as baseline. During the further two weeks, we placed in front of each client a double-sided poker-chip, with the two sides colored in a different way, respectively green and red. The poker-chip was placed by default with the green side up so that the costumers, in order to receive the foodie bag, had just to leave it on that side, while to opt-out they had to turn it up on the red one. A centerpiece with simple instructions was placed on each table and a printed flyer with the instructions inside of each menu. The results confirmed our hypothesis: manipulating the default rule proved to be effective to increase the demand of foodie bags.

In 1978, Wolf introduced the construct of social validity (SV) in Applied Behavior Analysis research. Then, in 2005, Horner and colleagues included SV assessment as one of the quality indicators of single-case research. Thus, many researchers in special education have included SV assessments in published single-case research, but few guidelines exist to guide the rigor or reporting of these assessments. We conducted a systematic review of single-case research to explore how the researchers conducted and reported SV assessments. We identified 107 studies that used single-case design and included a SV assessment in the top five journals in the field from 2005-2015. We then reviewed each study�s SV procedures and results to identify if the assessment addressed the social importance of the goals, procedures, and outcomes (Wolf, 1978). Twenty-one of the 107 studies addressed all three factors and were included in a final in-depth review. We coded the content of the SV assessment in these 21 articles by the steps in the scientific method. The results reveal patterns in both prevalence and application of scientific rigor to SV assessments in single-case research since 2005. These patterns can inform current researchers� efforts to capture and report the social validity of their research.