Use of a Stated Waiting List Contingency and Reward Opportunity to Increase Appointment Keeping in an Outpatient Pediatric Psychology Clinic

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Abstract
Parents' failure to keep appointments is a major obstacle to the successful delivery ofpediatric services provided through ambulatory clinics for children. The present study investigated the efficacy of two interventions (Stated Waiting List Contingency, Stated Reward Opportunity) designed to increase the keeping of initial evaluations and subsequent therapy appointments in an outpatient behavioral pediatrics clinic. Ninety-nine consecutive clinic referrals were each assigned randomly to one of three groups. The Stated Waiting List Contingency entailed informing parents that their child's referral would be placed at the bottom of the clinic's waiting list if three appointments were missed. The Stated Reward Opportunity informed parents that they could deposit a coupon at the conclusion of each kept appointment in order to enter a monthly lottery to win a cash-equivalent reward. The third group served as a control in which parents were not informed of any specific contingencies. Results showed that both experimental groups kept initial evaluation and therapy appointments more often than the group assigned to the standard practice condition, with the Stated Waiting List Contingency most effective for initial evaluations.

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