Date of Award

5-2009

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Educational Specialist (EdS)

Department

Psychology

Committee

NA

Abstract

Identifying effective treatments to address undesirable behaviors is one major

goal of research in changing human behavior. Researchers want to demonstrate that it is

indeed the treatment that is effecting a change in the target behavior and not some

extraneous influence. When researchers examine the effectiveness of an intervention the

treatment is implemented with the attempt to decrease the influence of other factors that

may explain behavior change that occurs in hopes to see the desired effect of the

independent variable (treatment) on the dependent variable (behavior). For this type of

research, it is important to keep all variables except for the dependent variable as constant

as possible, even if it is impossible to control for all outside influences. One method to

increase the level of control within a study is to ensure that the treatment is accurately

implemented as planned in order to minimize the effects of outside variables and more

accurately determine if the treatment independent variable did effect any changes in the

dependent variable. The extent to which a treatment plan is followed is often call

treatment integrity, treatment fidelity or procedural reliability (Gresham, 1989). Lack of

treatment integrity limits the confidence in treatment research outcomes by calling into

question whether a functional relationship exists between the treatment process and

behavior outcomes. Until recently few studies have included the evaluation of treatment

integrity of the intervention examined (Schlosser, 2002: Mcintyre, Gresham, Di Gennaro

& Reed, 2007).

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