The impact of formatting skill acquisition procedures and treatment integrity

Abstract

Treatment integrity is an essential component of staff training. In order to implement discrete trail training procedures, treatment integrity must be monitored and taken into consideration when evaluating student's performance. This study examined levels of treatment integrity using three therapists in a home-based setting. There is a lack of literature surrounding formatting of skill acquisition protocols. In the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, there is no specific format used to write skill acquisition procedures for staff members to correctly implement discrete trial training. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, a discrete trial checklist was used to determine levels of treatment integrity when participant's implemented the original or typically used format for skill acquisition procedures. Subsequently, two different formats were presented to participants in an alternating treatment design to determine if the style of the format affected the treatment integrity. Results showed that a formatted procedure is needed to maintain high levels of treatment integrity. Future research with formatting skill acquisition procedures is needed to determine if the format style effects treatment integrity.