Date of Award

5-2009

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Educational Specialist (EdS)

Department

Psychology

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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