Toward a functional analysis of self-injury

Remote Coaching of Caregivers Via Telehealth: Challenges and Potential Solutions

The use of telehealth technologies to provide clinical services to families of children with autism and other developmental disabilities is a rapidly growing area of research. In particular, remote training of caregivers via video conferencing appears to be a promising approach for disseminating behavior-analytic interventions (Neely, Rispoli, Gerow, Hong, Hagan-Burke, 2017; Tomlinson, Gore, & McGill, 2018). Although remote training offers a number of advantages, it brings a variety of challenges that are unique to this modality. The field would benefit from information on problems that practitioners may encounter when providing these services and how to train caregivers effectively. In this paper, we report on the experiences of 18 practitioners who provided caregiver training via telehealth from four different sites across a 4-year period. We describe a variety of technical and clinical issues that arose during service delivery, suggest strategies for preventing and remediating problems, and include case descriptions and data to illustrate our experiences. This information may help prepare practitioners to deliver telehealth services and guide further research in this area.

A Primer on Single-Case Research Designs: Contemporary Use and Analysis

The overarching purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to the use of rigorous single-case research designs (SCRDs) in special education and related fields. Authors first discuss basic design types and research questions that can be answered with SCRDs, examine threats to internal validity and potential ways to control for and detect common threats, and provide guidelines for selection of specific designs. Following, contemporary standards regarding rigor, measurement, description, and outcomes are presented. Then, authors discuss data analytic techniques, differentiating rigor, positive outcomes, functional relations, and magnitude of effects.

Correspondence between the results of functional analyses and brief functional analyses

PURPOSE

This study sought to examine the correspondence between brief functional analyses and more thorough functional analyses as described in the model of functional assessment proposed by Vollmer et al.¹ Methods: A panel of trained clinicians indicated the presence/absence of specific functions of problem behavior based on graphic results from brief functional analyses and functional analyses conducted with 19 participants. These conclusions were compared across assessments.

RESULTS

The functions identified by the panel based on results of brief functional analyses had low correspondence with those of the more thorough functional analysis conducted with the same participants.

CONCLUSIONS

Although brief-functional analyses appear regularly in clinical practice and the literature, findings from this study suggest that results may differ from those of more thorough functional analyses. Additional study is necessary to determine the cause of discrepant results between these two methodologies.