AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF FUNCTION-BASED AND NON-FUNCTION-BASED BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTIONS
Open Access
- Author:
- Murphy, Craig Patrick
- Graduate Program:
- School Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 06, 2007
- Committee Members:
- James Kenneth Mcafee, Committee Member
Marley W Watkins, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Robert James Stevens, Committee Member
James Clyde Diperna, Committee Member - Keywords:
- positive behavior supports
functional behavioral assessments
behavior
behavior interventions
functional - Abstract:
- Managing difficult and challenging behaviors in the classroom has become a critical responsibility for teachers and school-based teams. They must ensure that a child’s disruptive behavior does not interfere with his/her learning, or the learning of other students in the classroom. Due to these increasing demands, researchers have closely examined the functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and positive behavior support (PBS) provisions in IDEA 2004 (Wright & Wright, 2006). Specifically, numerous researchers continue to question the appropriateness of the provisions and have sought to determine whether behavior intervention plans (BIPs) developed based on data obtained from an FBA (function-based) are more effective than BIPs that are developed based on descriptions of the problem behaviors (non-function-based) for increasing on-task behaviors. Four elementary students participated in the study, 2 from third grade and 2 from first grade. Classroom teachers nominated the students because they demonstrated off-task behaviors that interfered with their academic progress. A multitreatment, single-subject design was utilized to examine the relationship between student behavior and function-based and non-function-based behavior intervention plans. Results indicated that function-based behavior intervention plans were associated with greater increases in on-task behavior for each of the 4 students. Implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.