Association for Behavior Analysis International

In-situ staff training often involves verbal feedback, which tends to be delayed and may be distracting to staff. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of an auditory clicker sound as a conditioned reinforcer to train behavior interventionists' relevant clinical skills during in-situ training. A multiple-baseline across behaviors design indicated that the intervention was effective in increasing all target behaviors for all three participants. For two of the participants, we conducted maintenance probes one to five weeks after the final training session and performance continued to occur at a high level. Although the participants ranked the contingent clicker presentation as less disruptive and fairer than typical feedback methods, they ranked it as slightly less helpful, slightly less worthwhile, and slightly less pleasant than typical feedback methods. Two of the three participants asked for this procedure to be used for other clinical skills outside the scope of the study. Findings of this study can offer a different and perhaps more practical approach to in-situ staff training.

Behavior Analysts, Behavior Analysts in training, para-professionals, ABA masters students

Successful intervention requires ongoing evaluation in the form of objective data to determine the effects of treatment. The importance of ongoing data collection with the ability to make changes to treatment plans based on immediate information is essential to the treatment of individuals requiring behavioral interventions. However, if those implementing behavior intervention fail to submit this information, data-based decisions cannot be made. Support for the effectiveness of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) procedures for improving and or maintaining staff performance in the human services field has been well documented. The use of group contingencies have been used in an organizational setting to decrease staff problem behavior and a variation of a group contingency has used to decrease staff absenteeism. However, previous studies have not determined the most effective components to Group Oriented Contingency based procedures to change staff behavior. A group multiple baseline will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a single intervention (e.g., lottery-based group contingency) procedure with the addition of the remaining intervention (e.g., performance feedback) across 4 groupings of staff providing behavior intervention services.