This study examined two strategies for increasing the accuracy with which general education teachers implemented a peer tutoring intervention for reading comprehension. The intervention was implemented for 5 elementary school students who had been referred for consultation services. Initial implementation of the intervention by the teachers was variable, and the data exhibited a downward trend. When consultants held brief daily meetings with the teachers to discuss the intervention, implementation improved for 2 of 5 participants. Four of the teachers implemented the intervention at levels substantially above baseline during the performance feedback condition, whereas implementation for 1 teacher increased following discussion of an upcoming follow-up meeting with the principal. Student reading comprehension scores improved markedly during the peer tutoring intervention. Three students maintained these gains 4 weeks after the intervention ended. The implications of these findings for the maintenance of accurate treatment implementation in applied settings are discussed.

This study examined the treatment integrity with which general education teachers implemented a reinforcement based intervention designed to improve the academic performance of elementary school students. The intervention was implemented for three children who were referred for consultation services and were identified as exhibiting performance deficits based on prior assessment. Treatment integrity was assessed via permanent products produced by the intervention. The results showed that teachers, maintained adequate treatment integrity for two to four days, after which, implementation began to deteriorate. Subsequent implementation of daily performance feedback by a consultant markedly improved treatment integrity. Intervention use improved student performance for two of the participating students.Consultation and collaboration between general education teachers and specialists such as school psychologists have been widely advocated as means of developing and implementing interventions in general education. Models for the delivery of consultation services such as collaborative consultation (

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This study examined the integrity with which 4 general education teachers implemented an intervention designed to improve the academic performance of elementary school students. Treatment integrity was measured daily using permanent products. The results showed that the 4 teachers markedly increased the integrity of the delivered treatment when they were provided with performance feedback. The results suggest that academic performance improved for the group of students as integrity improved.

Functional analysis of behavior depends upon accurate measurement of both independent and dependent variables. Quantifiable and controllable operations that demonstrate these functional relationships are necessary for a science of human behavior. Failure to implement independent variables with integrity threatens the internal and external validity of experiments. A review of all applied behavior analysis studies with children as subjects that have been published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis between 1980 and 1990 found that approximately 16% of these studies measured the accuracy of independent variable implementation. Two thirds of these studies did not operationally define the components of the independent variable. Specific recommendations for improving the accuracy of independent variable implementation and for defining independent variables are discussed.

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