• Watch the Unit 4 Lecture. (transcripts)
• Read the following scenario

Scenario:

Evaluating Interventions

Very Good Company, an organization that produces widgets, has recently had a decline in the number produced per day and has also experienced an overall increase in staff turnover. You have completed the pinpointing and measurement steps of the problem-solving process and it is now time to design an intervention and select a research design to evaluate the intervention. For your discussion, you utilize the problem-solving model to determine the next steps. You select a research question for your intervention and a research design to evaluate the effect of your intervention and prepare to review your plan with Very Good Company at your next meeting. For your discussion response you should cover the following:

1. Identify the 5 steps of Aubrey Daniel’s problem-solving model in your own words. Include a discussion of the importance of each step.
2. Compare and contrast the AB, ABA, and Multiple Baseline designs. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each.
3. Select an intervention to implement at Very Good Company, with the consideration that most interventions in Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) involve feedback and reinforcement. Choose a research question for your selected intervention.
4. Select a research design to evaluate your research question. Describe why this is the best research design for determining the effects of the intervention. Include a discussion of other considerations within the organization related to the implementation of this research design and intervention.

Peer Responses:

Review two of your classmates’ posts to assess the following:

Critique your peers’ choices of research designs. Did they select the most appropriate designs for the research questions? What are some considerations that they may have missed in relation to using the selected research design at Very Good Company?

Reading and Resources

Your reading this week will provide an overview of the research design used in applied behavior analysis (ABA). The reading will primarily focus on within-subject designs but will also provide information regarding between-subject designs. In addition, your readings will discuss variables that impact the effectiveness of interventions, as well as other explanations that could contribute to the effect of a program.

In your textbook read:

Chapter 12: “Performance Feedback”

Chapter 13: “A Model for Problem Solving”

Read the follow article in the Purdue Global Library:

Kim, J. (2010). Within-subjects design. Sage Publications, Inc. In Salkind, N. J. (2010). Encyclopedia

of research design (pp. 1638–1644). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Lane, J. D., & Gast, D. L. (2014). Visual analysis in single case experimental design studies: Brief

review and guidelines. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 24(3/4), 445–463.

TEXTBOOKS

Daniels, A. Bringing Out the Best in People: How to Apply the Astonishing Power of Positive Reinforcement.