No abstract

Students with disabilities who display serious (e.g., dangerous) problem behaviors are frequently educated in alternative school settings. Although there is considerable research on intervention approaches (e.g., function-based support) to support individual students with challenging behaviors, there is a lack of research on schoolwide intervention approaches to support all students in alternative school settings. A 3-year, descriptive, single-subject case study (AB design) was conducted to examine the impact of introducing School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) into an alternative education setting. Results indicate that introducing SWPBS is associated with an overall decrease in serious incidents and an increase in the percentage of students who refrain from serious physical aggression. The limitations and implications of this study are described. Keywords: alternative settings; school-wide interventions; school-wide positive behavior support; positive behavior supportS tudents with disabilities who exhibit chronic and highintensity (i.e., dangerous) problem behaviors are frequently educated in alternative education settings (e.g., nonpublic schools) when a typical public school is unable to provide the level of support necessary to ensure safety (see Note 1). The goals of such a placement include (a) providing education in an appropriate setting and (b) improving student behavior to an extent that the student can return to a less restrictive setting. Unfortunately, preliminary research indicates that student behavior may be negatively affected by placement in an alternative educational setting (Friedrich, 1997). Therefore, there is a need to identify interventions that will positively affect the behavior of students placed in alternative education settings.Empirical evidence supports a variety of individualized intervention strategies for individual students with intensive problem behavior (e.g., individualized functionbased support; Marquis et al., 2000); however, there is limited research on approaches to successfully support a whole school of students with significant behavioral needs. To date, one empirical study has investigated the effectiveness of a schoolwide intervention approach in an alternative education setting: D. N. Miller, George, and Fogt (2005) documented a systemic approach to effecting desired behavior change at the Centennial School of Lehigh University. At the time of the study, Centennial School served students (ages 6-21) who were identified with emotional disturbance or autism. The authors described that "violent and disruptive student behaviors, as well as the use of negative sanctions such as seclusionary time out and physical restraint, were common place and occurred at high levels" (p. 555). For example, there were 1,064 documented physical restraints in 1 year (an average of 14 per student).In response to these undesired student behaviors and reactive disciplinary procedures, Centennial School staff adopted a systemic change process that included (a) identifying and documen...

In two experiments, events that were recorded using continuous duration recording (CDR) were rescored using 10-s partial interval (PIR), 10-s momentary time sampling (MTS) and 20-s MTS. Results of Experiment 1 showed that data paths generated by each interval method produced conclusions about functional control that were similar to those based on CDR when using reversal designs; however, for multielement designs, 10-s PIR was prone to showing differentiation between data paths that was not evident with CDR. Results of Experiment 2 showed that both 10-s and 20-s MTS yielded data paths on behavior-behavior relations (e.g., covarying responses) that were consistent with CDR whereas 10-s PIR produced some behavior-behavior patterns that were not. In both experiments, 10-s MTS generated data paths that were nearly identical to the respective CDR data paths. The implications of these findings for researchers and clinicians are briefly discussed.

Research articles published during the first 31 years of Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis were assessed for reports of social validity measures. Two measures of social validity (treatment outcome and treatment acceptability) were assessed for each article. In addition, articles were assessed for the incorporation of analog versus naturalistic settings. Overall, treatment outcome and acceptability measures were reported in less than 13% of articles. In addition, studies conducted in naturalistic settings were more likely to report social validity measures than studies conducted in analog settings. Possible reasons for the deficit in the reporting of social validity measures and potential outcomes of this deficit are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR), in the form of continuous access to preferred leisure items, has recently been reported as a successful treatment for automatically reinforced aberrant behavior. However, previous research has shown that the outcome of such procedures can be compromised under certain circumstances, such as when the response effort required to access leisure items is increased. The purpose of the current study was to assess the efficacy of two variations of NCR as treatment for automatically reinforced stereotypy. In the first phase of the study, functional analyses revealed that the stereotypy of three individuals with developmental disabilities was maintained independent of social consequences. A sensory class assessment was then conducted to identify the specific sensory products that appeared to maintain the behaviors. Finally, we evaluated the effects of NCR (using stimuli identified in the previous assessments) under two conditions. In the first condition, the leisure item was made freely available, by placing it on the table in front of the participant. In the other condition, an experimenter prompted the participant to interact with the leisure item at the beginning of the session. The results indicated that NCR successfully competed with stereotypy only when participants were prompted to interact with the leisure item. These findings are discussed in the context of developing NCR interventions for automatically reinforced aberrant behavior.