Association for Behavior Analysis International

This symposium highlights innovative applications of behavior-based safety procedures in both organizational and community-based settings. The first study explored the application of a task clarification procedure to improve fire-safety skills of employees working in a health and human service setting. This study also implemented enhancements to onboarding and training protocols for new employees to ensure efficacy in organizational level improvements to safe practices within work culture. The second study investigated the effective and efficient use of antecedent interventions to reduce driver speeding in a community setting. In addition, these procedures were effective in increasing pedestrian safety and ensuring safe community practices. Together, these presentations will showcase effective, low-effort strategies for fostering and maintaining safe behavior across diverse environments. In addition, these studies highlight the importance of ethical consideratations related to safety-based research and applications to solving dangerous behavior and environments. Discussion will focus on practical solutions in applied settings that require minimal resources yet yield lasting safety improvements.

All individuals interested in promoting safety are welcome.

Previous research on safety has evaluated the efficacy of a variety of training procedures to teach adults or staff members on steps to take to exit a building safely in the event of a fire. Many organizations train their employees via computer-based instruction (CBI), in which computer technology is used to deliver training to users. However, CBI trainings may not have the greatest utility when organizations need to train a specific set of skills, as many CBI safety trainings provide more general information. In Experiment 1, the researchers evaluated the effectiveness of different training methods to teach fire evacuation skills to participants; computer-based instruction, task analysis and instruction, and feedback. The researchers found that computer-based instruction was not effective in teaching the specific steps that should be taken to exit a building safely in the event of a fire. For majority of the participants, instructions plus a written task analysis to follow?was effective in training the appropriate steps to take to exit a building in a contrived fire scenario. In Experiments 2 and 3, the researchers utilized a group design to teach fire evacuation skills to existing staff (Experiment 2) and incoming staff (Experiment 3) at an early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) center using task clarification. The results of these experiments validated the results of Experiment 1, providing evidence that task clarification can be utilized in a group setting to train center-specific fire evacuation skills. Results from this study may provide organizations with a more effective training system for training employees to safely exit a building if a fire were to occur.??