Teaching prosocial skills in early childhood education settings has beneficial outcomes on immediate behavior change and long-term social-emotional and academic outcomes. However, early childhood educators are in need of effective, efficient, and feasible strategies to explicitly teach and reinforce young children’s prosocial skills, especially those who already struggle with social skills. Using a non-concurrent multiple baseline design, the research team investigated the effects of a novel intervention, Social Sprouts, on an individual child’s and class-wide display of positive peer interactions and disruptive behavior. Social validity data were also collected to better understand the teachers’ perceptions of feasibility, effectiveness, and acceptability. Results indicated an increase in both individual children’s and class-wide display of positive peer interactions, with less pronounced effects for disruptive behaviors. All three implementing teachers perceived Social Sprouts to be acceptable, feasible, and effective. These results highlight a promising and feasible class-wide intervention to be implemented in Head Start settings.
This study applies the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to an analysis of teacher responses in the U.S. to interview questions about commitment to implement Tier 1 positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS). Qualitative thematic analysis resulted in 24 codes that were assigned to three themes derived from TPB: (a) attitudes toward PBIS, (b) normative beliefs about PBIS, and (c) perceived behavioral control of PBIS implementation. Results were also analyzed by commitment levels reported prior to interviews. The high-commitment group reported perceptions of improved relationships with students and no concerns about peers or leadership. The mid-commitment group reported concerns about their own knowledge of PBIS but a belief that they gain competence through experience and exposure. The low-commitment group reported concerns about the lack of positive student outcomes and perceived inequities in implementation. Results are discussed in terms of development of implementation strategies to support implementer commitment through alignment with previous work in TPB.
Parent training programs are designed to strengthen parents’ knowledge, skills, and capacity to address their child’s needs within daily routines. Although family well-being has long been recognized as an important outcome, less is known about how parents perceive parent training in relation to their family quality of life (FQOL). This qualitative study explored how 10 parents of autistic children in the United States defined and described their FQOL and reflected on their experiences with parent training. Findings highlighted that parents viewed balance across caregiving, work, and personal life as an important aspect of FQOL. Caregiving demands and barriers to services were identified as major stressors, whereas family closeness and bonding emerged as an important enhancer. Findings also underscored several key components that could be incorporated into parent training to support FQOL, such as building rapport with families, tailoring interventions to family contexts, involving family members, enhancing the relevance and application of strategies, and fostering empowerment through advocacy and knowledge. These findings suggest practical directions for designing parent training that builds family capacity and supports both child development and family well-being.
Researchers and practitioners have long utilized self-regulation interventions to address behavioral needs for students with and at-risk for disabilities; however, these interventions are often adult rather than student-directed. As such, students may lose opportunities to develop critical self-awareness and decision-making skills associated with improved self-regulation and behavior. In this U.S. study, we executed a nonconcurrent multiple-baseline across participants design with three high school students with autism spectrum disorder to test GoalSetGo, a new self-regulation intervention designed to promote student agency and decision-making in the intervention design process. Findings indicate that practitioners were able to implement GoalSetGo with their students with a high degree of fidelity, and two of the three students demonstrated immediate and yet short-term improvements in academic engagement. Social validity ratings provided by both students and practitioners indicated strong usability, feasibility, and acceptability. Implications for research and practice, limitations, and future directions are also discussed.
Although the effectiveness of function-based interventions in meeting the behavioral support needs of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities has been explored extensively, the social validity of function-based interventions from the perspective of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities has received less attention in the research literature. Therefore, our purpose was to conduct a systematic literature review of single-case function-based intervention research studies conducted in PK–12 U.S. school settings between 2006 and 2022 to understand the prevalence of the participation of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in social validity assessments. We identified 142 reports that met our inclusion criteria. Of those, only 11 included social validity assessments involving students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, suggesting a critical need to incorporate student voice in function-based intervention and explore meaningful social validity assessment practices for this student population.
