A comparison of sources of baseline data for treatments of problem behavior following a functional analysis

Abstract

It is common practice in research on the treatment of problem behavior to compare levels of targeted behaviors during treatment to levels when treatment is not in place. Some researchers use data collected as part of a multielement functional analysis as the initial baseline, whereas others collect new baseline data following completion of the functional analysis. We evaluated whether the source of baseline data influences the reliability and efficiency of decision-making. Results suggest that similar decisions are made in regard to treatment efficacy using the different sources of baseline data, but using data from a multielement functional analysis as baseline may save time. Interrater agreement was adequate, but lower for some graphs than has been observed in past studies. Several potential explanations for this discrepancy are discussed.

Evaluating sources of baseline data using dual‐criteria and conservative dual‐criteria methods: A quantitative analysis

“…These results are mainly consistent with the conclusions from Scheithauer et al (), which suggest that using data from previously conducted FAs may not necessarily influence the reliability of clinical decision making. Of course, results from the current study do not directly relate to or measure the reliability of clinical decision making across different sources of baseline data per se, but rather highlight the risk for false positive outcomes associated with different baseline sources characterized by (un)systematic variability.…”

“…Thus, the purpose of the current investigation was to extend findings by Scheithauer et al () by evaluating the proportion of false positives for baseline series generated by FA data and original baseline data collection using procedures developed by Fisher et al () and employed in a manner similar to Lanovaz et al (). The procedure described by Lanovaz et al (and also Falligant et al, ) is an ideal tool to examine baseline data because any changes in the mean or trend within baseline series reflect uncontrolled variation and not the impact of implementation of an independent variable.…”

“…This course of action may be appealing because using the extant baseline as the initial baseline for treatment may be more efficient and reduce the number of instances of problem behavior in comparison to conducting a de novo baseline. Scheithauer et al (2020) evaluated the degree to which extant baseline data affected the reliability and efficiency of clinical decision making relative to de novo baseline data by examining the correspondence of clinicians' decisions regarding treatment outcomes with each type of baseline. Their results suggested good interrater agreement for treatment decisions between the two sources of baseline data.…”

“…As an illustrative example of this method, and its relevance to the examination of different sources of baseline data, consider Data Set 13 reported by Scheithauer et al (2020). For this case, we extracted the baseline (i.e., "single element") and FA (i.e., "multielement") data using a freely available online data extraction program (WebPlotDigitizer; Rohatgi, 2019), and applied the DC procedure briefly described above (Falligant et al, 2019;Lanovaz et al, 2017) to measure the proportion of false positives ( Figure 1).…”

“…Scheithauer et al () evaluated the degree to which extant baseline data affected the reliability and efficiency of clinical decision making relative to de novo baseline data by examining the correspondence of clinicians' decisions regarding treatment outcomes with each type of baseline. Their results suggested good interrater agreement for treatment decisions between the two sources of baseline data.…”