Psychology Posted: April 11th, 2014
Imagine that you are a counselor working with a child who is having some behavioral problems at her elementary school. As a scholar practitioner, you approach your work with her from an empirical standpoint and want to measure the effectiveness of your work. As such, you pose the following research question: “What impact does a designed intervention have in reducing off-task behavior, physical aggression, and verbal aggression for the identified child?”
For the purposes of this research, the target behaviors for intervention are as follows:
1. Off-task – failure to maintain eye contact with task at hand for more than 3 consecutive seconds
2. Physical Aggression – hitting/pushing/kicking peers/teachers, throwing objects
3. Verbal Aggression – threatening, yelling
Consider the following observation report:
During the first observation period, which was conducted on Monday (in math class) between 11:20 and 11:30, 10-minute, 10-second, partial interval recording was used to assess the frequency of off-task behaviors, physical aggression, and verbal aggression. Kaya was observed to be off-task 12% of the intervals observed, engaged in physical aggression 0% of the intervals observed, and engaged in verbal aggression 2% of the intervals observed.
During the second observation (during recess), which was conducted on Wednesday from 9:00 to 9:30, Kaya was observed to be off-task 15% of the intervals observed, engaged in physical aggression 20% of the intervals observed, and engaged in verbal aggression 3% of the intervals observed.
Kaya was also observed on Friday from 10:30 to 10:40 during a group activity. Kaya was observed to be off-task 20% of the intervals observed, was observed to engage in physical aggression 7% of the intervals observed, and was observed to engage in verbal aggression 10% of the intervals observed.
Off-Task
Physical Aggression
Verbal Aggression
12%
0%
2%
15%
20%
3%
20%
7%
10%
Based on the above data, you determine that you must design a behavioral intervention for Kaya and determine if it is successful. As you begin the process of investigating your research question:
Briefly describe a time series design that you would use to investigate the impact of your intervention, and explain how you would collect and record the additional data. Be specific. Select a method for graphically representing the provided data. Use the method to create a graph. Analyze the data and provide a narrative description of your analysis.
