Assuring the Quality of Your ABA Interventions Via OBM

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Assuring the Quality of Your ABA Interventions
Via OBM

• Chair John Austin (Western Michigan University)
• BETH SULZER-AZAROFF (Browns Group of Naples
  University of Massachusetts)

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Abstract

• Applied behavior analysis has documented the
  value of an abundance of successful interventions
  in
• Health
• Education
• Welfare
• Private sector
• Quality replication, or the faithful duplication
  or methods, is more easily said than done.
• Inconsistency
• Drift from refined protocols
• So performance doesnt improve as anticipated
• Organizational behavior management strategies can
  play an important role.
• OBM remedies.
• Examples from the promotion of improved
  performance
• Students in a variety of educational settings
• Adults within their everyday working lives
• A new emphasis for OBM
• Its staring us right in the face. What is it
  ????

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(No Transcript)
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Objectives

• By the end of this tutorial you should be able
  to
• Describe some typical illustrations of
• Programs found extremely effective under tight
  experimental conditions
• Attempts are real-world applications
• Drift away from the experimental protocol
• Resultant failure of results to reproduce as
  anticipated
• How our learning histories condition us to rely
  on control by antecedents
• Look more broadly at the network of contingencies
  within organizations that support and interfere
  with top quality replication
• Apply that perspective to analyzing your own
  situation
• Generate solutions to test where you are
• Identify what we have at our fingertips to help
  us meet this challenge

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The Wonders of ABA Discoveries

• Education
• Regular education
• Academic performance (Achievement)
• Quality
• Rate
• Physical prowess
• Sports
• Attendance
• Deportment
• Special education
• Health Welfare/well-being
• Exercise
• Infection control
• Occupational and community safety
• Private sector
• Service industries
• Banks
• Restaurants
• Manufacturing

Applied Behavior Analysis
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What Often Happens When we Attempt to Reproduce
Results?

• Often it works like a charm
• Frequently it doesnt

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Examples

• Praise in school
• Improves conduct
• Increases progress rates
• Worsens progress
• Has no effect on progress rates
• Pay for performance on job
• Increases performance rates
• Increases safety, quality of service, or
  production
• Or has no effect
• Why?

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Typical Way of Attempting to Replicate in
Organizations

• Staff training
• Tell and show
• Describe methods and results of ABA studies
• Show data
• Maybe demonstrate
• Possibly role play
• Maybe even feedback during simulation
• Possibly follow-through by viewing results
• Performance data number of failures, drop-outs,
  merit scholarships, scores on achievement tests
• Number of accidents, profit margins

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Analyzing the Circumstances in Cases of Failure
to Reproduce Results

• Different learning histories, skill repertoires
  and contingencies of reinforcement
• Participants
• Mismatch between participant skill repertoires
  and intended objectives
• Insufficient motivation
• Faulty contingencies of reinforcement
• Interfering contingencies of reinforcement
• Mismatch between established conditions and
  available contingencies of reinforcement
• Contingency managers
• Mismatch between participant skill repertoires
  and intended objectives
• Insufficient motivation
• Faulty contingencies of reinforcement
• Interfering contingencies of reinforcement
• Mismatch between established conditions and
  available contingencies of reinforcement

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Local ContingenciesResidential DD Treatment
Facility

• A- B- C analyses are the core of OBM
• Typical Behavior Attending job site avoiding
  horrendous errors
• Typical short-term consequences Left alone
• Typical long-term consequences Pay good job
  security perhaps corrections, etc.
• Typical Antecedents Training, instructions,
  admonitions, schedules, etc.

(A) B C
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Local ContingenciesSporting Goods Manufacturing
Plant
Typical behavior Attending job site avoiding
egregious errors Typical immediate consequences
Pay for performance corrections for errors or
termination Possible longterm consequences
Promotion, piece rate increase Typical
antecedents On the Job Training, instructions,
admonitions, schedules, etc.
(A) B C
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Local ContingenciesPublic School Classroom
Typical Student Behavior Completing
tasks Typical short-term consequences Praise or
avoidance of reprimands Typical long-term
consequences grades, parental approval or
disapproval, promotion, and so on Typical
Antecedents Written or oral instructions,
admonitions, schedules, etc.
(A) B C
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Change Process in a Nutshell

• Intervention
• Up the reinforcers by
• Choosing effective ones
• Distributing them
• Soon
• Often
• Clarify the Antecedents
• Goals that are specific, challenging, achievable

• Examples
• Care workers
• Praise
• Deliver tangible rewards
• Deliver clear instructions
• Supervisors
• Give feedback numbers
• Praise
• Show or demonstrate clearly
• Teachers
• Praise
• Provide rewarding activities
• Give clear instructions
• Match student skill level with tasks
• And others

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Typical OBM Intervention

• Training of managers
• Concepts
• Skills in simulation or on-the-job
• Monitoring Observational recording
• Feedback
• Reinforcement
• Others
• Recommended follow-through consultation
• Interviewing
• Observing
• Reviewing data
• But not always done

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How Successful are These Approaches

• Often they are at least temporarily
• And there are data to support it
• Success happens when everyone wins
• Often they are not
• Behavior of personnel, students, return to
  baseline patterns
• Why?
• Change costs (punishes)
• Time
• Effort
• Material resources

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Paretos Law

• 20 investment 80 results
• 80 investment for most of the of the
  remaining results
• How critical would the latter be?
• Decisions based on various considerations
• Financial
• Legal
• Ethical
• Humanitarian
• Other

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Exploring Metacontingencies

• Metacontingencies are, Contingent relations
  between cultural practices and the effects of
  those practices for the group.
• --- University of South Florida Web Site

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Who Has the Most Contingency Control?

• Usually the top dog.
• But not always.
• And not solely

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MetacontingenciesFlow of Contingency Control
Residential Treatment Facility
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Overcoming the Cost Barriers at Residential
Care Facility

• Contingency control
• Recognize the key sources
• Reallocate reinforcers
• Redistribute responsibilities
• Formalize
• Observation
• Recording
• Rapid feedback
• Merited praise
• Feedback up the line of authority
• Also to external consultant
• And back down again

• Results of two separate interventions
• Within Psychological Services
• More functional analyses conducted
• Fewer injuries
• Within residences
• More client engagement

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Outside Influences Safety

• Internal Sources of
• Contingency Control
• Lines of Authority
• Safety staff
• Office staff
• Union
• Fellow workers
• Schedules
• And many others

• External Sources of Contingency Control
• Family demands
• Friends
• Health status
• Life style
• Local culture
• Media
• And many others

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What is Assessment in Higher Education

• An ongoing process aimed at understanding and
  improving student learning
• making our expectations explicit and public
• setting appropriate criteria and high standards
  for learning quality
• systematically gathering, analyzing, and
  interpreting evidence to determine how well
  performance matches those expectations and
  standards
• using the resulting information to document,
  explain, and improve performance
• When embedded effectively within larger
  institutional systems, assessment can help us
• focus our collective attention,
• examine our assumptions
• create a shared academic culture dedicated to
  assuring and improving the quality of higher
  education
• --(Thomas A. Angelo, AAHE
  Bulletin, November 1995, p.7).

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Promoting Participation in Assessment at
University Level
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Does All This Give You a Headache?

• Cheer up
• Remember the 8020 Rule
• You can get 80 of the output with a 20
  investment
• So try to identify the most powerful, durable and
  manageable reinforcing contingencies
• And capitalize on them

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Harnessing Meta- and other broad contingencies

• Short Term Effects
• Monitoring
• Teacher delivery of praise
• Providing verbal feedback
• Staff use of gloves
• Providing verbal feedback
• Number of goods meeting quality standards
• Providing graphic feedback
• Number of safe and unsafe performances

• Long Term Effects
• Involving
• Principals
• Monitoring and feedback
• Managers
• Monitoring and feedback
• Middle and senior managers plus external QA
  managers
• Feedback and recognition
• Family members

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Typical Patterns
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A Suggestion for Our Field

• As in areas such as developmental disabilities,
  beyond intuitive A-B-C analyses, we need to
  consider composing and testing simple, valid
  functional assessment methods and instruments
• Systems of organizational analysis
• Generic observational checklists
• Formal interview protocols
• Scatter plots
• Functional analytic methods
• Test these out for
• Utility
• Feasibility
• And above all, for validity

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OBM Has the Science and Technology to Combine

• Perhaps, by making our analyses more rigorously
  functional, we will help promote replications
  that work as designed and intended.

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Functional Analysis is the Hallmark of the
Science of Human Behavior
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To obtain materials

• Copy of talk
• References
• Handouts
• Bazaroff_at_comcast.net
• Website brownsofnaples.org