Teaching staff who work with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders to evaluate the treatment integrity of Discrete-Trials teaching sessions
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Date
2015
Authors
Wightman, Jade
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Abstract
Treatment integrity is an important component of behavioural interventions, however few studies have examined methods to teach supervisors to evaluate the treatment integrity of such interventions applied by front-line staff. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a self-instructional package to teach individuals to evaluate the treatment integrity of discrete-trials teaching (DTT) sessions using the Discrete-Trials Teaching Evaluation Form (DTTEF). Participants consisted of six staff from the St.Amant Autism Programs. In a modified multiple-baseline design across a pair of participants, and replicated across two more pairs, at Baseline, a participant observed a confederate who role-played an instructor teaching three tasks to a confederate who role-played a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Each participant was required to evaluate sessions taught with (a) low integrity, (b) moderate integrity, or (c) high integrity. During training, participants studied a self-instructional package. At Post-training, participants were assessed on the same tasks as during Baseline. During Generalization, participants were assessed evaluating the treatment integrity of three videos of an Autism Tutor administering DTT to a child with ASD. Finally, during a seven-month Follow-up, four participants were available and were assessed evaluating the treatment integrity of a confederate instructor teach a confederate child with low, moderate, and high integrity. Results demonstrated that after an average of 1 hour and 16 minutes of training, there was an immediate increase in accuracy across all participants. Specifically, mean accuracy increased from 47.6% in Baseline to 84.7% at the Post-training assessment (a 37.1% increase). All participants showed excellent generalization results, and three of the four participants who were available at the Follow-up assessment performed at a high level. These results suggest that the training package has potential to be used as an effective method to train staff who work with children with ASD to evaluate the treatment integrity of DTT sessions.
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Keywords
treatment integrity, discrete-trials teaching evaluation form, self-instruction