It makes sense: if you believe in the procedure you stick to it. Now, how can we make parents believe in some complex behaviour analytic procedures we ask them to implement with their children? Some believe that it can work, read about or heard from others, and will follow the procedures on a rule-governed basis. So we have a chance to get to the results and the successful results hopefully will then control future implementation of behaviour analytic procedures. Other parents may not be able to carry out complex procedures, or even simple ones for that matter, for a million reasons I am not discussing today, I just beg the professionals to consider seriously. These parents will need significant help to carry out the plans, starting with a good relationship with the service provider, the person making them plan for them. This will start at the first contact and develop through the time the provider asks all the questions he/she needs to ask and gets all the information necessary to write a sound behavioral intervention. During this time, everything counts, from empathy to rapport with the child, to vocabulary used, to body language. So invest in it. Finally, some parents will really need the outcome to affect their implementation behaviour, thus they will need staff to work with the child or the behaviour analyst to demonstrate a little bit at least. I advise my staff to start with a simple intervention with one of problem the parents identified, data they collected and we designed a data sheet for, a graph to show them before and after, and demonstration. If we can target something simple and meaningful off the bat and we are successful the parents will enter the journey - we do home-based 36 hours per week for up to 3 years - more "confident", to use the study's (below) term.
This post was prompted by a study just published in the Behavior Modification, with 21 parents, that demonstrated that they adhere to procedures better when they are confident that in themselves as "behaviour agents" and when they are confident that the intervention will bring the outcomes they expect. The study is not well controlled (e.g., really missed actual correlation between treatment integrity as recorded by trained observers versus self-report on treatment integrity), but it gives food for thought on this straightforward, but that still needs good demonstration, point. Study's main conclusion:
"... perceived effectiveness as a behavior change agent, confidence in the intervention to produce meaningful change, and acceptance of child in family and community. Perceived confidence significantly predicted adherence in a regression model (p < .05)."
For a little more generality confidence...
"Responders and nonresponders did not differ significantly on either variable according to a t test of independent samples (p < .74 for marital status and p < .95 for children at home)."
Abstract and link to paid PDF here.
