How to Identify, Define,

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How to Identify, Define, and Assess Behavior

• Chapter 3

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How to Identify, Define, and Assess Behavior

• Identifying the goal of the program
• Defining the target behavior
• Conducting observations

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Identifying the Goal of the Program

• Behavior analysis unique among psychological
  approaches
• emphasis and development of assessment methods
• used as part of treatment

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Identifying the Goal of a Program

• Guidelines
• Determined by societal standards
• Regardless of source of intervention (behavioral
  or other)

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What makes a behavior worthy of intervention?

• Impairment
• Illegal behaviors
• Concern to individual or significant others
• Preventive

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What makes a behavior worthy of intervention?

• Impairment
• Extent to which everyday functioning is impeded
  by a particular problem or set of behaviors
• Meet role demands?
• Home, school, work, socially
• No restrictions

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Impairment

• Is a criterion for psychiatric disorders
• Depression
• Schizophrenia
• AD/HD
• Impairment does not necessarily mean a person
  will meet criteria for psychiatric dx

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Illegal

• DUI
• Skipping school
• May not cause impairment

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Concern to themselves or others

• Social skills
• Toilet training
• Relevance to future functioning?

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Prevention

• Early intervention
• Pre-academic behavior
• Behaviors that promote safety or health
• Breast self-exam
• Proper handling of chemicals

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Some Criteria for Identifying Goals of
Intervention Programs

• Behaviors that bring clients to normative levels
  of functioning in relation to their peers
• Behaviors that are dangerous to self or others
• Behaviors that decrease risk

• Interaction with peers exercise and activity of
  elderly persons
• SIB fighting at school, spouse abuse
• Safe sex, not smoking, wearing seat belts

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Criteria, cont.

• Behaviors that affect adaptive functioning
• Behaviors that can lead to other positive changes
• Behaviors that reduce felt problems of people
  with whom client is in contact

• Social skills not attending school or work
• Increasing pro-social speech taking medication
  as prescribed
• Tantrums poor marital communication

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Goals

• Increase desirable behavior
• Decrease undesirable behavior
• Even if goal is to reduce undesirable behavior,
  focus of program can be on training adaptive
  alternatives or positive behaviors

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Goals

• Important to state goals in positive terms even
  if the goals is to reduce a behavior problem
• Positive opposites

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Positive opposites are those adaptive behaviors
that denote how the individual is to behave
instead of engaging in the maladaptive behavior.
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Positive Opposite

• Always helpful to add a second goal identifying
  the positive opposite
• Be concrete

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Example Reduce tantrums

• Positive opposites
• Walk away from provoking situation
• Asking for help from an adult
• Suggesting compromises

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Considerations Contexts

• Context in which the behavior occurs
• Stimulus control
• Antecedent events and situational cues

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Considerations Consequence

• Develop conditioned reinforcers
• Pair neutral stimuli (praise) with primary
  reinforcers (food)

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Considerations

• What goal should take priority?
• Address contextual issues (environment)

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Class Activity

• With a partner, develop a one to two sentence
  scenario that identifies person and a problem
  behavior
• Based on your scenario
• Identify a goal for a target behavior (problem)
  and
• Identify a positive opposite for this problem and
  identify a goal for that behavior

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• Self Control Project
• TASK ANALYSIS
• Select a problem area. This can be related to a
  behavioral excess or deficit.
• Complete a narrative (ABC) recording in a
  situation where the behavior occurs or could
  occur.
• From the narrative recording and other
  observations, develop a functional analysis of
  contingencies maintaining the problem behavior.
  Also, develop a functional analysis for the
  positive opposite behavior. I WILL PROVIDE
  COACHING ON THIS. Complete a written summary of
  the functional analyses, including contingency
  diagrams.
• Turn in narrative recording and functional
  analysis on October 8.
• Develop goals for the project
• Write operational definitions for the behavior
  problem and the positive opposite and design a
  data sheet to record these behaviors.
• Turn in target behavior and data sheet on October
  15.
• Collect at least 1 week of baseline data before
  beginning intervention.
• Design intervention that addresses problem
  behavior and the positive opposite behavior.
  Identify the type of intervention design you will
  use (AB, ABAB, Multiple Baseline across Settings
  or Behaviors). I would prefer you use something
  more than a simple AB design.
• Implement intervention. Continue to collect
  data.
• Prepare poster for in class poster session. (see
  task analysis for poster preparation)

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Defining behavior

• Begin with general domain TANTRUMS
• Then identify a specific definition that permits
  assessment

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Defining the target behavior

• What are the criteria?
• Objectivity
• Clarity
• Completeness

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Objectivity

• The measure refers to observable characteristics
  of the behavior or to events in the environment
  that can be observed
• EXAMPLES
• The number of times a child hits, kicks, talks
  out of turn, asks a question,
• Number of dishes in the dishwasher, number of
  dirty dishes in the sink, number of cigarettes in
  the ashtray, number of questions answered

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Clarity

• A definition is so unambiguous that it could be
  read, repeated, and paraphrased by an observer or
  someone initially unfamiliar with measure.
  Little explanation is needed to begin actual
  observation.
• EXAMPLE Hitting includes anytime the childs
  elbow, forearm, or hand strikes another person or
  object

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Completeness

• Delineation of the boundary conditions so that
  the responses to be included and excluded are
  enumerated.
• Example Not included in hitting is incidental
  contact with others when walking in the hall or
  giving high fives when greeting or congratulating
  self or others

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Operational Definitions

• Defining a concept on the basis of the specific
  operations used for assessment
• In behavior analysis, typically use direct
  observation of overt behavior
• Ex. concept of tantrums
• Parents can tell about them too far removed
• Rather observe them, see where they occur,
  under what circumstances, and whether there is
  change in response to intervention

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Measures

• Paper-pencil measures
• Interviews
• Reports from others
• Physiological measures
• DIRECT OBSERVATION

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Operational Definition of Concept of Depression?

• Use multiple sources
• Beck Depression Inventory score
• Physiological measures of arousal
• Self report of depression
• Nonverbal facial expression that suggests
  depressed mood
• Direct signs of depression crying, spending
  time in bed, avoiding work and social situations

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Other Examples of Concepts

• Hyper
• Destructive
• Aggressive
• Self-injurious
• ????

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Class Activity

• Select a behavior and write an operational
  definition that could be used to do observational
  assessment

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Check

• Does your definition meet these criteria?
• Clarity
• Objectivity
• Completeness
• Explain

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Task Analysis

• Goal of program to develop a complete set or
  sequence of behaviors?
• Concretely describe (analyze) the sequence

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Task Analysis

• Definition
• A way of proceeding from the general goal of the
  program to a number of small, trainable, and
  highly concrete tasks
• Each component behavior of a task analysis is
  called a step

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How to write a task analysis

• Identify the desired behaviors
• By observing those who can perform the task well
• Solicit input of experts

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When writing a task analysis

• Specify the behaviors in small, trainable units
• No firm rules about the size of the unit
• Individualize!

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Changing oil in a car

• Steps?

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Remediating kitchen hazards

• Grease on stove
• Etc.

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Tying a bow

• Steps?

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Ordering a pizza

• Steps

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Washing clothes in a washing machine

• Steps?

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Class Activity

• Write an 8-10 step task analysis for a behavioral
  sequence
• Purchasing 1 item in a store
• Writing a check
• Balancing a checkbook
• Making scrambled eggs
• Packing a gym bag
• Hand washing
• Putting on a band aid

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Task Complexity

• Many small units grouped into one step of a task
  analysis
• Vs.
• Many delineated steps

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How many steps?

• Decision based upon
• Complexity of the goal
• Baseline level of behavior
• Speed with which new behavior is acquired

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Assessment

• Next step after precise definition of behavior

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Assessment

• Essential (2 REASONS)
• Identifies the extent to which the target
  behavior is performed before beginning the
  program (BASELINE or OPERANT RATE)
• Does behavior change after program is
  implemented?
• Compare baseline rates to rates following program
  implementation

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Rely on judgment?

• Distortion of what has actually happened

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Judgment

• Slippery slope
• Influences (such as psychological state of person
  doing the judging) bias reports over and above
  what has actually taken place

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Solution

• Direct observation

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Advantages of direct observation

• More direct measure of the level or amount of the
  target behavior
• Judgment may still play a role

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Direct observation

• Strive to minimize judgment
• Developing the measure of the behavior helps to
  minimize judgment
• Task analysis
• Objective, clear, complete definitions
• Focus on OVERT behavior

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Direct observation

• Provides information about whether a program is
  working
• Used as a basis for making decisions about
  whether or not to change the program procedures

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Question?

• Is all judgment or inference removed if we use
  direct observation?

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Strategies of Assessment

• Assessment of the target behavior
• Determine effect of intervention strategy

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Different Types of Measures

• Frequency
• Discrete categorization
• Interval recording
• Amount of time (duration latency)
• Intensity
• Number of persons

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Frequency

• Useful when the target response is discrete and
  when it takes a relatively constant amount of
  time each time it is performed
• Observe for constant amount of time or use rate
  measure
• of responses / of minutes

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Discrete Categorization

• Classify responses
• Correct/incorrect performed/not performed
  appropriate/inappropriate
• Especially useful in measuring whether several
  different behaviors have occurred
• EXAMPLE checklists

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Interval Recording

• Behavior is observed for a single block of time
• The time block is subdivided into shorter
  intervals
• Record whether behavior occurred or not during
  the interval, but do not count all occurrence in
  the interval
• Whole interval vs. partial interval
• Variation time sampling record at different
  times rather than in a single block of time

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Amount of Time

• Duration amount of time the response is
  performed
• Latency how long it takes the person to begin
  the response from the time that a cue is provided

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Intensity

• Magnitude, strength, amplitude, force, or effort
  of the response
• Can use discrete categorization
• EXAMPLE tantrum identify several behaviors
  and record yes/no whether each of the behaviors
  occurred or not

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Number of Persons

• Number of individuals are counted
• Prevalence
• How many people at a particular point in time
  show a particular problem

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Other Strategies

• Weight in pounds
• Number of cigarettes smoked
• Number of ounces of alcohol consumed
• Blood pressure
• Records of teenage crime
• Self reports

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Selection of Assessment Strategy

• I will coach you on your selection of a recording
  method
• You will begin by selecting the method that best
  matches your problem
• I will provide feedback about your choice and
  make suggestions as needed

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Conditions of Observation

• Obtrusive people being observed may react to
  observers presence
• Minimize by avoiding interaction, letting people
  adapt
• Observer drift
• Periodic retraining, feedback
• Observer expectations may influence their
  recordings

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Reliability of Assessment

• Interobserver agreement
• Consistency of assessment lack of consistency
  may mask differences
• Minimizes observer bias
• Agreement reflects whether the target behavior is
  well-defined

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Conducting Checks of Agreement

• Ensure observers work independently without
  access to one anothers recording sheets
• Supervise observers carefully during a
  reliability check
• Avoid conveying expectation to observers
• Consider conducting periodic retraining sessions
• Have people other than observers calculate
  reliability

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Estimating Agreement

• Frequency measures
• Form a fraction smaller frequency divided by
  larger

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Interobserver Agreement

• Interval recording
• Divide the number of intervals in which both
  observers mark the behavior as occurring
  (agreements) by the number of agreements plus the
  number of intervals in which one observer scored
  the behavior and the other did not
  (disagreements) and multiplying by 100

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Interobserver Agreement

• of Agreements
• of Agreements of Disagreements

X 100
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Data analysis?
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IIIIIIIIII I I IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII II IIIIIIIIIIII I I I I
Discrete occurrences of occurrences of
intervals
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Data analysis?
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___ _ _ _
Duration of occurrences of intervals whole
interval vs. partial interval vs. time sampling
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Conclusion

• Target behavior assessment
• Rudimentary
• Precondition for effective intervention and
  evaluation of behavior-change programs
• This chapter how to ID, define, and assess
  much more to come!!!!