Technical Report
4/4/2022
Timothy William Chambers
Single Case Study
Research Background
Childcare employees have responsibilities and duties to provide a healthy and safe environment for all children for before and after school services. Increasingly, childcare employees job criteria have expected training objectives to promote mastery and hone abilities to care for children throughout their developmental stages. Childcare workers endure stress-related objectives in the workplace such as maintaining physical activity, awareness and safety protocols for children and decrease problem behaviors consistently throughout a daily basis. To extend upon this analysis, we want to maximize areas to improve child-care workers techniques to increase desirable behavior in children within the natural environment. The treatment package is designed to teach reinforcement techniques (differential of reinforcement of alternative behavior, differential reinforcement of other behavior and differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior) to childcare workers to fundamentally equipped their abilities by extending their knowledge in psychology through the dimensions of aba literature to reduce problem behaviors in children effectively. As a child-care worker with the expected job goals to create activities, health & safety teachings, and constant supervision from higher chain commands. The purpose of this study is to allow childcare workers to implement differential reinforcement techniques to decrease problem behaviors in children by using Behavior management skills techniques in a childcare facility.
Reliability
Participants during this research study was asked to demonstrate their knowledge by applying differential reinforcement to increase appropriate behavior(s) while extinguishing problem behaviors in the natural environment. The consistency was part of using 4 step behavior skills training in which each participant during the training session was required to understand differential reinforcement from a behavior analytical perspective. In which proper ways to reinforce a child’s desirable behavior through social praise, recognition or receiving tangible items. Rate was converted by frequency when the total count is divided by the observation period of 15 minutes throughout the 7-weekday time span. Data itself shows to be reliable when observing each participant upon applying behavioral interventions in their work environment.
Social Validity & Stress Survey
Social validity was measured for each participant(s) to score on their experience applying these techniques in their workplace and difficulty upon learning behavioral interventions such as differential reinforcement during the training session. The overall results from both subjects reported that the reinforcement techniques were effective on reducing problem behaviors and overall, the scores were extremely high. Stress survey was score by each participant to determine their stress level when using reinforcement techniques. Stress survey was indeed effective for both subjects, stating there was no stress occurring when using behavior management skills techniques in the workplace. In which one participant provided effective feedback upon their experience during this experiment.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study is to allow childcare workers to implement differential reinforcement techniques to decrease problem behaviors in children by using Behavior management skills techniques in a childcare facility. The findings demonstrated that both participants were able to reduce problem behaviors in children from utilizing behavior management skills techniques in the workplace. Another finding from this study was that both participants reported using behavior management skills techniques to cause less stress to occur. Previous research by Vaughn et al. (2020) emphasized the focus of child-care workers, stress accumulates from dealing with children's problem behaviors and reported the lack of respect from parents that serve children. Based on the similarities from previous research the current study did execute on measuring child-care employees stress level based on the research question. Previous research done by Miller et al. (2018) described work-related strain, increased burnout and effects on a worker's well-being. Difference was that the current study focused on teaching and training workers to apply differential reinforcement techniques to children that distribute problem behaviors. Current study did not focus on self-care methods for employees, which is a key difference overall. The experiment itself proved that the training procedures that each participant received were effective by applying differential reinforcement techniques to extinguish problem behaviors in their given environment. Suggesting that it could have impacted the overall visual analysis of the current study but overall, both participants did exceptionally well by applying differential reinforcement to its fullest extent. There were many findings for the
current study, being able to teach and train employers with no aba experience on how differential reinforcement procedures are applied while seeing reinforcers being delivered effectively to children across all ages. Another finding in this study was that participants were able to understand behavioral interventions in a short period of time and apply the concepts on the exact same day.
Naturally there are findings in the study; however, we do have limitations as well. First, we did have some reactivity which occurred throughout the current study. Secondly, the opportunities to observe the participants were very short during this experiment. Observation period of the current study was approximately 15 minutes in which for future research to extend the time further. Future recommendations should also consider monitoring participants through different times of day instead of strictly evening time when children get out of school. The implications to this practice were beneficial by applying the fundamental principles of Behavior management skills techniques with employees that have no experience in aba. Correspondingly, while problem behavior occurs important to extinguish that behavior and have a replacement behavior in effect. These implications for this study were overall effective with some limitations and future research to consider in the near future when implementing these practices accordingly.
References
Miller, Donohue-Dioh, J., Niu, C., & Shalash, N. (2018). Exploring the self-care
practices of child welfare workers: A research brief. Children and Youth Services
Review, 84, 137–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.11.024
Vaughn, Willis, E. A., Ward, D. S., Smith, F., Grummon, A., & Linnan, L. A.
(2020). Workplace-based opportunities to support child care workers’ health and safety.
Preventive Medicine Reports, 19, 101154–101154.
