The Training and Validation of Behavior Observation and Description Skills

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Abstract
Teaching critical treatment-related skills to behavior change agents is an important task. One such treatment-related skill would seem to be the ability to observe and specifically describe ongoing appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. In this study, the effectiveness of a training "package" in teaching behavior specificity was demonstrated in two experiments. The package involved written instructions, practice in describing videotaped interactions, skill rehearsals, and detailed positive and corrective feedback. Multiple baseline designs were employed to experimentally,evaluate the effects of training on objective measures designed to reflect the degree of behavioral specificity of trainee descriptions. These objective measures were subsequently found to correlate highly with subjective ratings of the descriptions by child care workers and professional training and research personnel, thus providing evidence of the validity of the objective measures. The research suggests that important behavioral treatment skills can be identified, measured, trained, and validated.

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