patc + 2008 beyond functional behavior …...patc + 2008 beyond functional behavior assessment...

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PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis. I’m going to kind of bridge the gap between data collection and now what do we do with it? And I want to start off by a little disclaimer. I am what Claire was saying about the indentured servant. That was my training. That’s how I kind of grew up in special education. I was, am, a research assistant for professors and I was the person who had the make up those 15-second interval data collection systems. And I was the one who had to go out and data collect for two, three hours at a time. 10 seconds, 2-3 hours at a time, once a week. So, that’s kind of what I was trained in, so my perspective is slightly different than normal, typical people in this perspective on data collection. And I fully recognize that. However, I am grateful for that training that I got because I know a lot of data collection skills and then I can taper them down, I can adjust them and tweak them, to a real world situation where it’s actually something that a typical person could get accomplished. So, I am going to -- so, some of the things I’m going to talk to you about may seem a little pie in the sky, ivory tower. I’ve gotten that a lot, so you won’t offend me if you think that. But I want to give you kind of those pie in the sky ideas with the mindset that you’ll take them and think about them and think how to adjust them for your needs in your situation. So, I just want to offer that disclaimer, first of all. Data analysis, for me, is a lot about telling a story and making an argument. So, that’s kind of how I’m going present this part of the process. The data is no good sitting in a file drawer. You have to make it understandable for someone else, and we use pictures, which are the graphs, and we use words, which are kind of our summary of those graphs. So, it’s all about telling a story, telling that person’s story, and making an argument for the intervention that you’re going to try to develop based on that data. So, I’m going to follow the same format that Claire did. A lot of the questions that we’re kind of structuring our presentation on came from either questions that were asked during our consultation or through our FBA tours. So, one of them is how can I graph data from different data sources? From what I’ve gathered from the FBA tours, there’s a lot of frequency counts going on, and frequency counts aren’t bad. They’re okay. They’re good. They have their place. But there are other sources of data, other methods of data collection, that can offer a lot more rich information. So, I wanted to give you some ideas of, what are some other data sources? So, here’s one of the dreaded interval systems. And let me just kind of explain it a little bit to you and I’ll get in some technical information along the way. I kind of -- I think some of the other presentations have talked about this already about functional assessment. We present it and teach it as a linear process, but it’s certainly not. It would be nice if you do one step and you check off and you go on to the next step, but most of the time it doesn’t happen that way. And data collection is the same way. This data sheet was developed for a first grader who was included in a regular education classroom, and I had already done observations, the kind of narrative ABC reports, so I had some good notes about what were some environmental variables that were at work for this little guy in his classroom. And so, what I needed to do next was collect some

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Page 1: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2

Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis. I’m going to kind of bridge the gap

between data collection and now what do we do with it? And I want to start off by a little

disclaimer. I am what Claire was saying about the indentured servant. That was my

training. That’s how I kind of grew up in special education. I was, am, a research assistant

for professors and I was the person who had the make up those 15-second interval data

collection systems. And I was the one who had to go out and data collect for two, three

hours at a time. 10 seconds, 2-3 hours at a time, once a week.

So, that’s kind of what I was trained in, so my perspective is slightly different than normal,

typical people in this perspective on data collection. And I fully recognize that. However, I

am grateful for that training that I got because I know a lot of data collection skills and

then I can taper them down, I can adjust them and tweak them, to a real world situation

where it’s actually something that a typical person could get accomplished.

So, I am going to -- so, some of the things I’m going to talk to you about may seem a little

pie in the sky, ivory tower. I’ve gotten that a lot, so you won’t offend me if you think that.

But I want to give you kind of those pie in the sky ideas with the mindset that you’ll take

them and think about them and think how to adjust them for your needs in your situation.

So, I just want to offer that disclaimer, first of all.

Data analysis, for me, is a lot about telling a story and making an argument. So, that’s

kind of how I’m going present this part of the process. The data is no good sitting in a file

drawer. You have to make it understandable for someone else, and we use pictures,

which are the graphs, and we use words, which are kind of our summary of those graphs.

So, it’s all about telling a story, telling that person’s story, and making an argument for the

intervention that you’re going to try to develop based on that data.

So, I’m going to follow the same format that Claire did. A lot of the questions that we’re

kind of structuring our presentation on came from either questions that were asked during

our consultation or through our FBA tours.

So, one of them is how can I graph data from different data sources? From what I’ve

gathered from the FBA tours, there’s a lot of frequency counts going on, and frequency

counts aren’t bad. They’re okay. They’re good. They have their place. But there are other

sources of data, other methods of data collection, that can offer a lot more rich

information. So, I wanted to give you some ideas of, what are some other data sources?

So, here’s one of the dreaded interval systems. And let me just kind of explain it a little bit

to you and I’ll get in some technical information along the way. I kind of -- I think some of

the other presentations have talked about this already about functional assessment. We

present it and teach it as a linear process, but it’s certainly not. It would be nice if you do

one step and you check off and you go on to the next step, but most of the time it doesn’t

happen that way. And data collection is the same way.

This data sheet was developed for a first grader who was included in a regular education

classroom, and I had already done observations, the kind of narrative ABC reports, so I

had some good notes about what were some environmental variables that were at work

for this little guy in his classroom. And so, what I needed to do next was collect some

Page 2: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

more specific systematic data collection that encaptured some of those environmental

variables that I wanted to, in the future, look at for an intervention plan. So, that is kind of

this gray shaded part down here. These were some of the environmental variables

through that narrative ABC reports that I saw might be at work, and I wanted to really get

specific information on that.

So, instructional or staff arrangement. There were different classroom settings within that

classroom. One-to-one, independent work, small group, large group. This is for a

classroom, but you would find that in a community setting as well. So, I wanted to know

what kind of -- how his behavior was during each of those kinds of settings. I left a place

where I could describe the task, what he was asked to do. Was it a difficult task? What

was the content?

This little guy also had a problem with complying with directions. So, I wanted to see, what

was his latency to complete a prompt? So, the teacher gave him a direction at 9:29 and

he didn’t complete it until 9:35. So, I was able to mark that down over there. And then I

also wanted to see what kind of prompts he was being given. IV is indirect verbal. DV is

direct verbal.

So, that’s kind of the bridge between the narrative, kind of write everything down ABC

chart, and the more focused, it’s still ABC type information, but it’s a little more focused.

Then up at the top I have -- you probably can’t see too well, or on your handouts, but it’s

just a series of boxes with pluses and minuses in them. And what those were, that’s the

kind of interval system that Claire was referring to before. I believe I used 15 seconds

probably. Sometimes I use 30 seconds if I have a lot to write down. But I was basically

collecting data on on-and-off task behavior. So, if he was on task it was a plus, if he was

off task it was a minus.

Claire alluded to different time sampling techniques. Momentary, partial, and whole

interval. I believe for this one I was using momentary time sampling. That’s when I had a

tape recorder, or I also have a vibrating timer, and -- yes, that’s one of my favorite tools.

And I have three of them now and they’re not with me now. They’re with my dissertation.

But so, I set it to go off every 15 seconds. And when it went off, I looked at Liam, the little

guy, and I said was he on or off task?

So, it’s kind of -- momentary time sampling is kind of my favorite time sampling technique

to use when I’m doing some of these checklist type of information because I only have to

look at Liam for on and off task at that 15-second mark. And then I have the rest of the 14

seconds to note the other things down there. So, that’s a good strategy.

Momentary time sampling is also good for things like engagement, on task behavior,

because it’s -- on task behavior isn’t like a discrete thing like hitting someone. It has a

duration to it. So, the only other way to get duration of on task behavior is to kind of have

a timer and you start it when he’s on task and you stop it when he’s off task. But that’s --

to me, I could never get the hang of that. So, I always stuck with the momentary time

sampling technique.

Whole interval is also something to use for on or off task behavior. That means they have

to be on task the whole 15 seconds in order to get credit. Now, that kind of

Page 3: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

underestimates how much he’s on task because say he’s on task for 10 seconds but off

task for 5 seconds. He’s not going to get a plus for that interval. So, to a certain extent,

these all have pros and cons, but you just have to kind of weigh them when you’re doing

that.

The gray shaded areas in here, I was also taking peer comparison data. So, it’s every fifth

interval, so once a minute, I was looking at a comparison peer, I kind of rotated around

the classroom, and saw what were they doing compared to what my little guy was doing?

And I’ll show you how I graphed that information later.

I don’t know -- not many of you work in schools, but kind of the benefit of looking at

comparison peers in a setting is kind of to see is it the setting that’s the problem, or is

there a problem between the individual and the environment? Meaning that if the peers

are as off task as your target individual, then there’s probably something wrong with the

setting or a more kind of class wide, setting wide problem. It’s not just a problem between

the individual and the environment. If the peers are fine and your individual is not fine,

then it’s obviously an interaction between the individual and the environment. So, that’s

one thing to consider there.

Unidentified Male: [indiscernible 00:09:45] teacher’s perception.

Kristin Starosta: Yes. Very good point. Yes. We’ve used peer comparison data for -- I’ve done a lot of work

with kids with just -- where are just labeled emotional behavioral disorders. And there was

one -- well, a young lady we have in the activities, she was almost going to be expelled

and we were called in to help her out and we found out, you know, it’s really just one

teacher who’s having the most problems with her. And we kind of got to that conclusion

through comparison peer data.

The next three graphs that are in your slides were all graphed from data collected from

that data sheet. And what I have, first of all, is when I’m looking -- when I’m analyzing the

data that I’m collecting, I kind of picture a funnel. So, a funnel is broad at the top and

narrower at the bottom. And so, I’m throwing all the data in and at the beginning I’m just

looking for kind of broad generalizations, because you collect a lot of data. So, you have

to sift through a lot of data to find something that says something meaningful to the

individual you’re trying to help. So, you look very broadly at the data and try to find some

broad generalizations that you can make.

For Liam, I made the generalization between academic activities and leisure activities.

And what I’m graphing here is percentage of intervals on task behavior.

And another thing about on task behavior, I use it a lot. All my graphs kind of have on task

behavior. I use it because it’s kind of a general indicator of how the person is behaving.

Rather than collecting data on their whole laundry list of problem behaviors, I can collect

data on if they’re on task or off task.

On task is generally the goal that we want everybody to work to. We want them to be on

task in school, on task in a leisure activity, on task in a work type setting. And also, if

they’re on task, they can’t be engaging in problem behavior. So, the two are mutually

exclusive or kind of negatively correlated.

Page 4: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

I do have -- you’re not going to be able to read any of the writing, but if you just know that

the gray bars are on task and the white bars are disruption. So, that’s the problem

behavior. You can see that they’re negatively correlated in general. When he’s very on

task, he has virtually no disruption, and when he has the higher rates of disruption, he has

the lower percentages of on task behavior.

So, on task, it’s a simple thing to kind of collect data on. It’s a good, positive goal to work

towards, so that’s why I use it a lot as a general indicator of behavior.

Okay, so we’re back to Liam. And you can see, I’m at the top of my funnel right now. The

general statement that -- you can see the peers generally are about the same on task

percentage, whether it’s academic or leisure, but Liam is certainly less on task during

academic activities than he is during leisure activities. So, I’ve gotten one broad statement

out of the way. This is helping me to narrow my focus and my analysis of the data for the

next step.

And this is a school setting, so it’s academic versus leisure, but in community settings it

could be active versus passive tasks, break versus work activities, preferred versus non-

preferred. Just kind of those general statements. They’re general statements because you

still can’t intervene on that information. You know that it’s academics that is a problem, but

there could be a hundred variables within academics that are the -- that is the problematic

variable. So, you have to look a little bit further.

So, this is the next more specific graph, and again, it’s Liam in the gray and his peers in

kind of the diagonal bar. And I’m looking at academic periods but I’m looking at how are

the kids grouped within that academic period? It’s large group, independent seat work,

and small group activities. Again, the peers are virtually the same across all those

activities, so it’s not a class wide thing. But Liam is definitely -- has more trouble during

those large group activities. So again, I’ve gotten more specific information, but I still don’t

know what it is about those large group activities that are causing the problem for Liam.

This is the final, kind of the tip of the funnel, the most specific graph. It’s those large group

activities, what are they doing during those large group activities? And this is a first-grade

classroom, so story time is a common activity during -- in that classroom. Again, the

peers, which are the kind of diagonal bars, again they’re virtually the same percentage of

on task across all three activities, but Liam has a lot more problems with listening to the

story with a discussion.

So, the far right here is listening to a tape of the story. So, he listens to the tape of the

story, he has no problem listening. Then listening to a story being read. So, the teacher

reads the story out loud. He has a little bit more problem with that, but he’s still not doing

too badly. But then once they listen to the story and then discuss it afterwards, you know,

so there’s a lot of questioning back and forth, and some may be higher level questions

that he maybe doesn’t understand, that’s where he has the most problems.

So, I’ve gotten to a really -- I’ve identified very specific variables through this graph, and

through the data that I’ve collected, and now I know what’s causing the problem for him

and where I need to --

Page 5: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

This is just a kind of more community adult type of example, and it’s aggression during

types of transitions. This is, again, kind of the tip of the funnel, the end of the funnel, type

graph where it’s very specific about what’s causing the problem for this individual. And

these are types of transitions. And transitions from home, no specified work expectations,

ending a break, ending morning work, and ending afternoon work. And you can see that

ending morning work is not a problem. You would have to kind of know what morning

work is in order to find out why that’s not a problem. But leaving home, not having

specified work expectations, and ending his afternoon work, those are the most

problematic areas. So, you know pretty specifically what’s a problem and you can develop

an intervention to address each one of those transitions.

What is on and off task data? Like, how do you define it? And it really is you have to

define it individually for the student that you’re working with. The person who asked me

said is tapping the pencil but looking at the teacher, is that on task? So, those are the kind

of questions that you have to have either with yourself or with the people who are

collecting data for you so that you can have a standardized definition of what you’re

considering on task and off task behavior, because you have to be consistent with those

data -- with those definitions.

Some people make a distinction between engaged time and on and off task behavior.

Some people just look at engaged time like in a school setting, only engaged in type of

academic, instructional activities whereas on task, I kind of use it as a more broad term

that they’re complying with the expectations of the setting or of the staff. So, that’s one

point.

And the data collection sheet that I showed you with the pluses and minuses, there was

no reason why some plus -- if you notice, all the rectangles, some of them were different

sizes, and that is just a consequence of cutting and pasting from an old version of Word

into a new version of Word into PowerPoint, and there was just too many problems with

that. So, there’s no reason for the differences in the rectangles.

Okay. So, data collection activity number one. What I did was I’ve given you three data

collection sheets. There’s one for -- they’re all for the same student, her name is Bridget,

and there’s one for science, one for math, and one for reading and language arts. And this

is one of the dreaded 15-second interval tapes that Claire was referring to earlier.

And let me just explain to you a little bit about what is on the data collection sheet. At the

top of each square there’s a plus and a minus, and again, that was on or off task, plus

being for on task, and that was taken by momentary time sampling.

The DR is disrespectful comments, and that was taken using partial interval data

recording. So, any time Bridget said a disrespectful comment during that -- if Bridget said

a disrespectful comment during that interval, we circled DR. We didn’t do a frequency

count; it was just if she did it once was the same as if she did it five times.

The P is for peer reactions to her problem behavior, either off task behavior or

disrespectful comments. Just a note about Bridget. She was a seventh-grade girl in

middle school. She was in regular ed. This is an example. She didn’t have autism, so not

all my examples -- the data that I have are from people with autism. Sorry. I only say that

because Claire’s not here. Oh, I forgot about that.

Page 6: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

So, she was the one I referred to earlier who was at risk of being expelled from her school

because she was being really -- saying a lot of not nice things to her math teacher

especially, and was getting in a lot of trouble. But her off task behavior had to do most

often with peers. If she was off task it was because she was talking to her friend. I

remember her friend’s name was Brittney. She was talking to her friend. She was passing

notes to her friend. She was yelling at the boy cattycorner from her because he was doing

something wrong. So, it was -- off task was generally peer related. So, I wanted to see

how her peers were responding to her. Were they either giving her attention, which is the

A, or were they ignoring her, which was the I?

Unidentified Female: [indiscernible 00:20:48] disrespectful?

Kristin Starosta: We came up with a definition. I know we harp on definitions in FBA tours a lot, but it was

really obvious. She would curse, she would say I’m not doing that, but with dripping

attitude. So, I know dripping attitude isn’t an operational definition, but --

Unidentified Female: [indiscernible 00:21:12]. You know it when you see it.

Kristin Starosta: Yes. That was Bridget. Yeah. So, we did have a discussion of what was disrespectful, but

it was -- you know, it most often was swearing and saying that I’m not going to do

something and pretty much saying I’m not doing that because you’re stupid and things like

that. So, that was what was disrespectful.

We also recorded -- the peer, again, that was partial interval. So, if the peer gave attention

during that interval, we circled it. If they ignored it during that interval, we circled it.

The T is for teacher, and we were looking at teacher responses. The R is redirection. So,

if she was off task, did the teacher redirect her? If she was off task or disrespectful, did

the teacher give her a consequence like do it one more time and then I’m sending you to

the office? I is ignoring and the P is for praise, like Claire said earlier, and it wasn’t

obviously praise for those problem behaviors, but we were just trying to see if Bridget was

getting any positive attention at any point during the day from her teachers.

I just wanted to kind of generally see how her teacher and how her peers were responding

to her.

From being in the classroom and kind of doing the ABC data collection, I kind of knew that

he was responding to the off task and disrespectful comments in virtually the same way,

so I didn’t see a distinction between the two. I kind of lumped them together. If I thought

that the behaviors were getting different responses, I probably would’ve separated it out,

but in this situation, I didn’t feel that I needed to.

And again, the data collection sheet, this is one part of the process. This was kind of also

a bridge between the narrative ABC data that I was taking, and I was trying to get to a

data collection system that I could use over long term to track progress on the intervention

that I hoped to implement with her. Now, when I implemented the intervention, I probably

would not collect data on peer responses and teacher responses. I probably would’ve only

-- I think by that point we were only collecting data on on or off task and disrespectful

comments. But this was kind of a bridge. I didn’t need the narrative reports anymore. I

was trying to get to long term progress monitoring and this was the data collection sheet

to kind of take me there.

Page 7: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

What you’ll see on your sheets is that I shade -- instead of circling, I couldn’t circle with

Word, so I shaded the behaviors that were observed during that interval. So, 0-1 she was

on task. 0-2 she was on task. So, any time you see the shaded, the little shaded plus or

the shaded letter, that means that behavior was observed during that interval.

So, what we want you to do is to look at these three data sheets and calculate the

percentage of intervals for on task and disrespectful comments for each class. So, you’ll

get how on task she was during science, how on task she was during math, and how on

task she was during reading and language arts. So, you’ll be able to compare her

behavior across those three classes, and then also get how many intervals did she

engage in disrespectful commenting behavior? And so, you’ll be able to get a percentage

for each of those classes.

And also, if you can look there are some intervals that are marked where the teacher or

the peers responses is marked, so you can just look at that kind of anecdotally and see

how the peers or the teachers are responding to her.

So, we passed out graph paper if you want to kind of draw your own little graph of what

those percentages are kind of using those bar graphs like I did for Liam’s examples, and

we’ll be around to help anybody with any questions that they have about it. But we’ll take

a couple minutes to do that and then we’ll see what you found.

Audience: [indistinct voices].

Kristin Starosta: For on task, what kind of pattern did you see with on task behavior across the different

classes? Math is bad. That could summarize our experience with Bridget. That would be a

good statement. Math is bad. Yeah. What was her percentage for math?

Unidentified Female: 4%.

Kristin Starosta: 4%? Yeah. I think I heard a 6%. So, yeah, you’re all in the, yes, the same range.

Unidentified Female: [indiscernible 00:26:47].

Kristin Starosta: Yeah. [indiscernible 00:26:49]. So, math really low levels of on task behavior. What about

science and reading? Science was 100%, yeah. And Stacy actually observed her in

science class, and I remember she had a really dynamic teacher who had really good

classroom management skills. So, science was not a problem.

Reading and language arts, what were her percentages like for that class? 84? Okay. So,

again, 80% is a pretty -- is not a bad percentage for a middle school class.

Unidentified Female: Conferences.

Kristin Starosta: Yeah. Or conferences. Yeah, if we took data here.

What about disrespectful comments? What were the percentages for that? The only class

was math. Okay, so she only engaged in disrespectful comments in math class. And what

kind of percent was that? 12%. So, I mean, if she’s swearing at her teacher 12% of the

class period that’s not a good thing.

Page 8: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

So, good. So, you can see that that interval system really honed in where the problems

were. Now, in math class, was there any data about how the teacher responded to it? Oh,

okay. Did anybody get that far?

Unidentified Male: [indiscernible 00:28:10] redirection.

Kristin Starosta: I’m sorry, redirection?

Unidentified Male: Primarily redirection.

Kristin Starosta: Primarily redirection. So, she was getting attention for these disrespectful comments.

Okay.

Yeah. I only gave you 3 data sheets out of the probably 5-10 that we collected. And these

data are representative of the whole. We overwhelmingly found that her on task

percentages were abysmal during math class. She was generally a high on task during

reading and science. We took comparison peer data as well and we found the same

pattern with the peers. The peers were on task during science and reading, but they

weren’t as low as Bridget was in math, but they were still low.

So, I remember saying to my professor, I come out of math class with a headache every

time I leave it because the classroom management is just out of control. And if we

intervene with Bridget, we would have to give her $50 for every minute on task because

that’s the only way we’re going to get her because she has too many people to be off task

with.

She had plenty of people talk with and we needed to address class wide variables. And

we did a very simple class wide incentive system where they got tickets for being

respectful and being quiet and doing their work. At the end of the class they pulled one

ticket out of the hat and that kid got a candy bar. And I thought it was too juvenile for

seventh grade regular ed, but it wasn’t. They loved it. All the kids liked it. Bridget

responded to it, her peers responded to it, so she didn’t have as many people to talk with.

I think the increase in structure in the class helped her to respect her math teacher a little

bit more. Her interactions with her math teacher were more positive. So, it was a success

story for her. And I wanted to put that out there that we did -- I did talk with the teacher,

get great information on Bridget, and knew that it wasn’t a skill deficit. Because that’s the

first place you -- that’s the first thing you think about, especially being teachers. You know,

can she do the work?

But yeah, if she couldn’t have done the work then that would’ve been one of the first

things we would’ve had to address because she needed help in order to be engaged in

the class.

There were so many things going on in the classroom, I doubt she was aware of me. The

example that Claire talked about earlier with the girl with selective mutism, she knew I was

in there for her. She glared at me. But Bridget, I don’t think she knew that I was in there --

you know, we just sat in the back of the classroom. And by observing the comparison

peers, our gaze was towards other kids, so that kind of helped our cause. But she was

much too concerned about talking with her friends to really notice me.

Page 9: PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior …...PATC + 2008 Beyond Functional Behavior Assessment Methods Data Part 2 Kristin Starosta: I’m going to be talking to you about data analysis

We just wanted to present the idea that there are other data sources that you can use to

collect information. I had a case recently for the Bureau where I would go and observe

and there would be no problem behavior, and I still had to do a functional assessment.

So, the staff people that were helping me gave me a big binder of all the incident reports

that happened over the past six months and I poured through them and they were --

incident reports tend to be pretty detailed because there’s usually some severe

aggression that occurs during it, so you know you have to be accountable for describing

what happened. So, they’re a really rich source of information about ABCs, and you can

get good information from there.

These are just three examples that I kind of modified from real life incident reports. And if

we can just read over them and you guys can just call out the ABCs of these incidents.

So, the first one is the students were walking in the hallway transitioning from the

computer lab to their classroom. Tom turned to Ben and said I’m going to kill you and eat

your liver. He made a gun with his finger and pretended to shoot Ben.

So, what might be some of the antecedents from that kind of --

Unidentified Male: Transition.

Kristin Starosta: Transition.

Unidentified Male: Low structure.

Kristin Starosta: Low structure.

Unidentified Female: Close proximity.

Kristin Starosta: Close proximity.

Unidentified Male: Lack of supervision.

Kristin Starosta: Lack of supervision.

Audience: [multiple voices].

Kristin Starosta: Might be some -- yeah. If it’s always Tom and Ben that, you know, there’s these liver

comments between, you might have to look at some -- you know, what’s happened in the

past with them? Either the temporarily proximal pass. You know, the class period before

or do they have kind of a long history together?

The second one. During break Pat was teasing a peer. The peer came over to Pat and

headbutted him in the middle of his forehead.

Unidentified Male: Downtime.

Kristin Starosta: Downtime.

Unidentified Female: Teasing.

Kristin Starosta: Teasing. Again, it’s another peer relationship. I’m sorry?

Unidentified Male: [indiscernible 00:33:24].

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Kristin Starosta: Oh, I’m sorry. Just antecedents. That’s all right. Yeah, so those are all -- and again, I

looked at these as a pattern across like 50 incident reports. So, this is just taking one out

of that bunch. But you get to see patterns over time.

While working in the office, Aaron stated that he was having a party at 10:30 and needed

to hurry up with his work. Aaron was reminded that he was at work and his next break

was scheduled for 11:30. Aaron began to raise his voice. He was directed to stay at his

worktable. He attempted to leave the work area and began hitting his staff.

Unidentified Male: Task demands.

Kristin Starosta: Task demands. Non-preferred activity. Maybe unclear work expectations or a schedule

issue.

So, our next question is, what if I don’t see consistent patterns in the data? So, not all

graphs turn out as nicely as the ones that we presented here.

So, I just want to reiterate the importance of an assessment. An assessment does a lot for

you. It helps you identify the function. And by identifying the function, you have a lot of

information to go on. You’ll be able to prevent the challenging behavior. If you don’t know

the function, you’re just -- you’re restricted to reactive consequence-based strategies. And

we all want to try to prevent problem behavior. That’s kind of why we’re here. So, an

assessment will be able to do that for you.

BSS kind of unilaterally making the decision that this variable or this piece of information

isn’t important. And that goes back -- you know, Claire talked about it, I talked about that,

is fidelity of data collection. Communicating with each other. Making sure everybody is on

the same page, because your data is only as good as the integrity of your data collection

procedures and definitions. Absolutely.

If you know the function, also you know what you need to teach them. Again, I’m a

teacher. Stacy’s a teacher. Claire’s a teacher. We’re all in here to teach, and behavior is

just another subject in school as far as I’m concerned, or in life. So, as Dr. Durand said

this morning, you know, we’re not doing our job if we’re not helping that person grow and

they have to learn new skills in order to be able to do that.

An assessment increases the chance of success. That’s another thing that Dr. Durand

said about trial and error. I’m doing a little project on a fourth grader and I’m comparing

just increasing praise with a functional assessment-based intervention. And he calls out in

class. He needs to comment on what everybody else is saying. When they give an

answer, he has to comment on that answer. And so, he calls out a lot. And it can get

annoying.

And so, you think it’s attention because he’s calling out. So, a typical intervention that you

might do without the benefit of an assessment is just give him teacher attention in the

form of praise. But it didn’t work. And I realized when I was observing him during these

sessions where he was getting increased praise, he didn’t want the teacher to say he was

doing a good job. He wanted the teacher to talk to him and engage in a conversation and

tell him how witty his comment was. So, and you would only get that by doing an

assessment and looking at those environmental variables and looking how he interacts in

that environment.

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So, when you’re looking at antecedents, there’s always an antecedent. It may not be

discrete like a direction or a task demand. You may have to go to the much more global

level of it’s lunch. It’s the lunch period. And that may be the only antecedent that you can

find, but it’s better than nothing. It gives you a place to start.

There’s also always a time when challenging behavior does not occur. So, look to those

times. I always do that at the beginning, and you can get a lot of information from that.

And that’s kind of the beginning of that funnel, academic versus leisure. When he has

problems versus when he doesn’t. It may not be a case of no problem behaviors

compared with problem behaviors. It may be high frequency versus low frequency. So, he

may engage in aggression or calling out a little bit less during this period and higher

during this period. That may be your only distinction, but at least it’s a place to start.

Yes. So, the final point is to -- and you guys brought it up just naturally. It’s just about

those setting events. Sometimes those things that are more in the past, before school or a

week ago, they may have an effect on good and bad days. And those are things that

aren’t as easy to observe, but by trying to define those good and bad days, talking with

family about what’s going on at home, you can collect information about that.

I think I told this story at one of the FBA tours, but one of my students who came to me,

her problem behavior was vomiting. And I did her as a project for class. I had data sheets

this thick trying to figure out when she was vomiting. She would walk down the hall and

vomit and then go on her way. You know? So, I couldn’t find any types of patterns in

terms of antecedents. But what I finally understood is by looking back to when it initially

started, and it initially started because she got sick in school one day and she was sick,

and she vomited because she was sick. She was sent home. She loved to be at home

with her mom. Over time she realized if she vomited, she got sent home.

So, she established -- and it took a year, at least, for the school to catch on that she was

vomiting because she wanted to go home. They just couldn’t conceive of it and they

inadvertently reinforced it. And so, it was just a really well-established habit. She had

gastrointestinal tests, you know, every test done. There was nothing wrong with her

system, it was just -- it was a habit. And it took probably about two years to go away, but it

finally decreased to really low levels. So, you have to look at those kind of behavioral

histories as well.

When analyzing consequences, we don’t operate in a clinical type setting. There are often

multiple consequences. Kids get attention and escape for problem behavior, so what do

you do? What I tend to look at is I tend to try to connect the consequence with the

antecedent. See which consequence matches the antecedent.

For example, if the student is given a worksheet and they protest the worksheet, they’re

getting attention and they’re getting escape while they’re protesting the worksheet. But it’s

the worksheet that precipitated the behavior. So, it’s more escape related than it is

attention related. So, I tried to look at that.

There are primary and secondary consequences. Stacy tells a story about one young lady

she worked with who the night before didn’t sleep very well, had expressed in the past

and that day that she didn’t like going to her day job. She didn’t want to go. She said that

verbally. She started to engage in a series of problem behaviors starting out pretty low

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intensity, escalating all the way to pulling hair and biting and punching. And she, once it

got to the punching, she was taken back home and allowed to have a nap. So, she got

escape and she got to obtain a nap. So, you know, the primary was she escaped going to

the day program that she didn’t want to go to. She also got that nap which she also asked

for, but it’s kind of the primary and secondary consequences.

And it very well may be both. You know? The human being is not so simple that we just

want one thing or the other. So, you may have to adjust both.

But a good way to focus it is looking at what the target individual says. We’re big

proponents of interviewing the person as one of those functional assessment methods.

Interview the parents, interview the teachers, interview the staff members, but try to

interview that person because they can offer some much needed clarity when you’re

looking at all those data.

When you look at the data, sometimes you just have to look at it differently. I talked a lot

about getting as narrow of a focus as possible, but sometimes you look so closely that it’s

just a bunch of mush. And so, at that point then maybe you have to go up to the -- you

have to make it a little more general and operate under that assumption for a little while

until you can get some clarity.

Getting other people’s perspectives. This is definitely a team process and sometimes if

you’ve looked at the data too closely, you’re a little too invested in it and having a fresh

eye come in and talking about it and giving out your theory and getting their input on it is

important.

Again, interviewing the target individual. Stacy had this situation with a middle school

student that she worked with, his problem behavior was encopresis in a windowless

classroom that was very small and packed with 7-10 kids plus a teacher. And she took all

kinds of data about his episodes of encopresis. Talked with parents, talked with teachers,

did a record review, talked to past teachers. And she was struggling with finding out why

he was doing this, and it wasn’t until she talked with him and became pretty frank with him

and asked him, you know, I know this is an uncomfortable subject, but why do you do it?

And he was very insightful for a young man and said I get back at the peers in my

classroom and it creates a not very pleasant situation for my peers. I get to leave the

classroom and go down to the nurse. So, he got to escape the classroom for a bit. So, he

offered some very important insight to the situation.

When you’re looking at the data, again, if you’re looking too narrowly and aren’t able to

have any clarity or any focus, try an idea. There was one at the FBA tours I talked with a

team who had analyzed every variable in the book and just weren’t finding any patterns.

And I just suggested kind of like Claire with the give them a snack. Try an idea. You’ll see

if it works. If it works, you know you’re on the right track. If it doesn’t work, you might have

collected a little more information about being able to narrow the field and then you can

either collect more data or try another idea. We’re not proponents of the trial and error

approach, but if it’s trial with assessment in combination, and you don’t have any other

ideas, then it’s a viable alternative.

And like Stacy was saying with the question about, you know, if family doesn’t want to

intervene with, school does, if you always keep the focus about what’s important to the

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individual and their quality of life and what’s important to their family, if you use that as the

guide, then you don’t have to look to the data as much to be the guidebook to the quality

of life and what the family and the individual wants and using that to guide your data

analysis.

And something to be ruled out, if someone’s health is in question, you always need to

make that consideration first. One of the biggest lessons I learned as a young teacher

was, I had a young man, he was -- he had severe mental retardation, severe level of

autism. He was nonverbal. We were teaching him [indiscernible 00:45:41]. But he started

to engage in a lot of self-injurious behavior, and I had just been very successful with him. I

had did an intervention for pica. I eliminated -- I helped him to eliminate his pica behavior

the year previous.

So, I may have been a little too full of myself maybe and I thought okay, he’s got self-

injury now. I can do my functional assessment. I even did a functional analysis. Yeah. I

went all and out Claire. Of course, with my professor’s help. So, I did this functional

assessment and functional analysis of his self-injurious behavior and weren’t seeing any

patterns. And then did a little more digging and finally realized that he had never been to a

dentist. And he needed desperately to go to a dentist.

I’m not sure what happened because by the time we figured that out his mom was very

overwhelmed and had bad experiences with dentists, couldn’t find a dentist who was

willing to work with him. It was a situation that I needed a little help to deal with and didn’t

quite get it and I wasn’t able to help her. But I feel that a lot.

And so, I don’t want to underestimate the importance of those medical or those biological

concerns. So, those should be addressed first and if you get to the end of your

assessment and you haven’t addressed them and you see no patterns happening, then

get on that right away.

Another big problem we see a lot is low frequency, high intensity behaviors. These are

things that get kids kicked out of school, get the police called, but they only happened,

you know, once every other month or three times a year. And we’re all about assessment

and data, and three times a year doesn’t give you a lot of data. So, the only suggestions

that we have for that are consider any kind of precursor behaviors. So, higher frequency

but lower intensity behaviors. Things that may kind of be in a chain to that higher

frequency behavior. See if you can see for any kind of clues that that higher intensity

behavior is happening.

And also, record reviews. You just have to go back as far as you can and collect all the

information that you have about that behavior [indiscernible 00:47:57] as to why it’s

happening.

I have two dependent variables I’m collecting data on. Only part of the screen is showing.

But you can see on task under column C and column B is number of praise statements.

So, on task is percentage of interval and number of praise statements is a number. It’s a

frequency count. So, those are different intervals, different systems. So, I can’t graph

them on the same Y axis. Obviously, that first Y axis is percentage of intervals.

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But to graph number of praise statements, to get another Y here on the right side -- now,

this is the newest version of Excel, so if any of you guys have old Excel, pretty much it’s

right click and you can do anything. So, I’ve clicked on the number of praise statements

line, and if I format the data series -- and again that’s a right click to get that -- and under

series options you see that secondary axis option? That’s all you do. And now the red line

is graphed on that -- thank you. It’s amazing.

Unidentified Male: That’s just --

Kristin Starosta: Yes. But it’s virtually the same on the old Excel as well.

Unidentified Male: Streamlined.

Kristin Starosta: You click on the line to highlight it, you right click. The window looks a little bit different,

but if you look for series options and secondary axis, it’s the same.

I think the other one that’s important to see is paying attention to the intervals that you’re

using. This is a graph that Claire made up, and if you notice she’s doing a frequency

count and the range is from 0-4, and this is for January. Then she’s also graphing March

data, but if you see the range is 0-2.

So, if you put those side by side, they would virtually look the same, just by looking at the

lines, but if you look at the interval, they’re not the same. Because Excel just automatically

puts that interval based on the high and the low of your data.

So, if you click on the axis, format. Like first click on it just to highlight it then right click to

get format access up. Then under axis options you have minimum and maximum. So that

normally -- when it first comes up it may be on auto, but if you click on fixed you can put in

your own top range. So, I’ll put in 4.

The other thing here is she’s doing frequency, like frequency of work refusals, crying, and

break request. You’re not going to have a half of a break request or half of a cry. So, you

don’t want to have your intervals be halves. So, you can just make that to 1. Your major

unit is the difference between each tick mark. So, [indiscernible 00:51:37].

The only reason why I have the minimum as a negative number is because technically for

graphs that are published in published journals, you’re not supposed to have the axis

cross at 0, because you may have some 0 data points and they’re never supposed to be

on the X axis. So, that’s a very nerdy thing to know, but.

Audience: [indistinct voices].

Kristin Starosta: So, now the interval is the same as January. And if you look at them now, there’s a big

difference.

Okay, the last slides that I’ll just refer to, and in your handouts, we wrote some guidelines

about how to write about the graphs that you’ve created with your data. And the

guidelines are pretty self-explanatory. In your handouts in the activity packet, I have

excerpts of an FBA report that I wrote for one of the students. So, you can look for that. It

also has sample [indiscernible 00:52:52] and sample support needs statements on that.

So, those are just our suggestions to you about kind of best practice for writing up an FBA

report.

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Stacy Nonnemacher: But what I am going to say, and I’m going to put this disclaimer out there, is that again,

one of our favorite responses to questions is it depends. And it does. It depends on the

environment. There are barriers and enablers to all environments. I’ve done FBAs and

state [indiscernible 00:53:21] have done FBAs in community settings and schools. There’s

barriers, enablers, and it depends on the team players. Right?

Interpersonal relationships are really hard. Think about your daily life. And now you’re

dealing with somebody with a challenging behavior. It’s hard work.

I remember when I was an assistant director of residential program for several years, and

when I had resigned, I said it would’ve been the easiest job if I was just supporting people

with disabilities and challenging behaviors. It was supporting everybody else that was

supporting the people with challenging behaviors that made the job so difficult. And then

supporting their relationships with one another to support the person with challenging

behaviors was very difficult.

So, the things, the strategies, that I’m going to talk about in response to the questions that

we get every time we do an FBA training, we always say wait until the advance FBA in

May conference. And a couple of weeks ago I’m like oh, crap. I have to answer those

questions now. But the answers really are coming from my experiences. There is not a

whole lot of data or a whole lot research out there talking about relationships, because it is

difficult. It’s difficult to quantify that. There is some qualitative data out there telling us, but

again, it’s coming from other people’s experiences. So, that’s what I’m sharing now.

Thanks, [indiscernible 00:54:40], for the prompt.

So, basically what this slide is saying is that our support plan is only as good as, Claire

said, the data that we collect. Well, that was her part of the presentation. I believe it’s only

as good as the contextual fit. The way it fits within the environment, the support plan is

going to work if it is aligned with the values and beliefs of the people on the team and the

characteristics of the environment itself. Right? And I think we all agree with that.

When I say that there is very limited research on teaming and specific strategies on how

to help FBA along and how to get teams to exist and follow through with this really great

process, the process that we know is great, there is a lot of research that says this is what

a successful team is. This is what they have. And we can all look at this and go yeah, we

all agree with this, but does this always happen in our everyday work that we’re doing with

teams? Not so much. Right? And this is the happy place that we all want to get to. And

this is what research is talking about.

But really, what happens with teams who support people with challenging behaviors? This

is a study that was done, it’s a qualitative study. They interviewed four teams of people

who worked in community settings. Today, Dr. Durand talked about over 600 FBA studies

out there. As of 2001, when this study was published, there was very limited functional

behavior assessments research published from community settings. And I just said that

sentence totally backward, but hopefully you all followed me.

What they did is they talked to several teams and said, you know, what’s going on here?

What sustains you? What are the struggles that you had? Not surprisingly -- and I kind of

look at these three things as kind of being cyclical in nature -- is that typically when we get

called in, BHRS or as a consultant or anybody in any of the community programs that you

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work in, you’re coming in to where the tension, the anxiety, the physical and emotional

stress is way up here. Right? So, they already have feelings of complete dread and lost

hope and we’ve tried everything, and they feel that they’ve already been invested.

Oftentimes when you’re coming in as an outside person, they’re going ugh, we needed to

have an outside person to come in. Are you welcomed with open arms? I can’t tell you -- I

mean, there’s been a few times, I could probably count on one hand, where they’re like

thank you. We’re so glad that you’re here. But it’s because they’ve already been to a point

where they’re going you know, we’ve used all our tools. They’re at their wit’s end.

So, then what happens is then you have these team dynamics starting, that they’re trying

to be right and there are these interpersonal conflict. They’re at their wit’s end. And then, if

you throw in somebody from the outside, or up from administration, who may be

challenging what you have already done, that it may be something that’s in the

environment that you’re controlling or it may be the interpersonal relationship that you

have with this person. Or it may be challenging the values, the overall values, of the team.

All of this plays a huge part of the teaming process.

So, what are some questions that we’ve been asked? The first one is how can I get team

members to buy into this process? I will say that Kris and I, when we talk about that -- we

worked together on a project at Lehigh University. It was called the PBS Project. This is

what we did. We literally went into schools and said give us your really tough kids and

we’re going to put a team together and we’re going to prove that functional behavior

assessment works.

I will also say that about 50%-60% of my time was being -- what I always said, I feel like a

used car salesman. If I would have ever been a used car salesman, that’s probably how

this person -- I felt like I was selling this process because a lot of the people that were on

the team, the teachers, the parents, especially the teachers, were saying okay. Hopefully,

this is just another initiative and this girl’s going to get out of my classroom and let me get

on with it. And the parents as well. Buy in to this process is really difficult.

Again, I’m only going to speak from my experiences and the stories that I have to tell.

One of the biggest things is enhancement and capacity. Actually, Kris and both consulted

with a little first grader and we always have say this, very spirited. And he came in halfway

through the school year. And again, first grade. Real cute classrooms, right? We know

they have really tiny chairs because we try to shove our butts on those chairs day after

day. But, you know, it’s a cute little classroom and all the little kids are cute, and we had a

teacher who was getting ready to retire. And he was there for about two weeks and -- by

the time we were called in -- and she said I think I’m going to do early retirement. I mean,

he was that challenging. He was trying to stab his peers with pencils. He was under the

desk. He called the teacher so many names, she wouldn’t even repeat them.

And what we realized -- we just thought okay, well, we’re jumping in. Here we come to

save the day. We have our FBA capes on, and we jump in. And then we realized wait. We

have to take a step back because she’s not buying in this process. You could just see she

was going [nods head]. Okay, so we’re going to collect data. We want to find out what is

[indiscernible 00:59:52]. And then we realize, you know, we need to talk about things, like

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the things we talk about at our FBA training. I don’t think everybody in their daily lives

talks about the function of behavior.

So, here’s a first-grade general ed teacher who has a kid with these many festive

behaviors. And what do you think she was thinking? Do you think she was thinking that

he’s doing it for a reason? For a purpose? No. She’s going he is evil. He needs to get out

of my classroom. So, I remember, Kris and I were like all right. We have to go in there and

talk to her. And it was -- we had her commit to it, an afternoon after school, we said give

us a half hour. And we really talked to her and we used that last strategy. We changed her

perspective. We put it into her perspective. I think that always works.

And in the grad classes that I teach on PBS, I always say now, think about your spouse or

your significant other. Think about one behavior they engage in. I bet it will fit into either

they’re trying to do it to obtain something or to escape something. My husband is so angry

that somebody taught me that a really long time ago because I’m like you’re trying to get

my attention right now and it’s inappropriate. But if you put it into that person’s perspective

-- and so, we started to talk to her about it.

Another thing when we talk about changing perspective, and it’s something that we talked

to her about, and somebody had taught me this a long time ago, is putting it in the thing

that they know. General ed teachers know what? Academics. And what do they usually

say? Behavior’s not my issue. But what do we do about kids that aren’t quite

understanding the academic expectations? We remediate, right?

So, why aren’t we doing that for the kids with -- who aren’t understanding the behavioral

expectations? Why aren’t we remediating for that? Because here’s the bottom line. Look

at all the time and energy you’re spending on the behavior and you’re not spending on

academics anyway. Add the kid, too, right?

Another thing -- and for those of you who were at the session that a Polk team and I had

done yesterday, which I think was very important to this process, was creating an

atmosphere of openness and honesty. We were able to say hey, we know it is difficult and

we know you have been getting pummeled for years. You may be up to here. This is what

we’re asking you to do. But if you feel you can’t do that, let’s talk about it. And maybe we

can address it within the cottage that you’re at. Or we had the administrator saying it’s

okay. We won’t hold it against you. You can move to another classroom. That happens

sometimes in schools.

Actually, part of the -- one of my projects that I’m working on at Lehigh University is we’re

interviewing people across the United States who are doing PBS and functional behavior

assessments in schools. And we’re asking them, what are some of the strategies you use

when all else fails? Because again, we have barriers, enablers. We have emotional

responses to doing functional behavior assessments and all these barriers because

people -- let’s face it, we all have our own baggage, right? So, now you’re putting like

eight people on a team to support a kid with challenging behaviors that have their own

baggage.

And one person, she was a principal and she fully believed in PBS, functional behavior

assessment. And she says when all else fails, I move that kid. Because it was just too

toxic of an environment and if I tried all those other strategies that I talked to you about

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and they didn’t work, why try to -- and she said beat a dead horse. She was from West

Virginia. So, she said I just -- I moved.

So, and that was the same idea, and that’s what they did at Polk Center and it worked and

now we’ve created a team around this guy that is more positive and we’re having really

good success. So, that’s kind of that strategic team composition as well.

So, the second question that we get sometimes is what if I cannot get team members to

collect data? You probably don’t have problems with this, right? So, what do we do about

this? I know Claire had mentioned this earlier and it’s worth repeating.

There’s a study out there, Daly, Edwards, and Marten, in which they’re looking at the

academic performance of kids with learning disabilities and problem behaviors. And part

of the reasons, and I think these reasons -- and I think they’ll resonate with you all and the

team that you work with when you ask them to collect data, are these five reasons. They

either don’t want to do it; have not spent enough time doing it, so they don’t know how;

have not had enough help to do it, right; have not had to do it that way before; and it’s just

too hard.

And I think -- well, because we’re in a field of disabilities and I really have always wanted

to develop my own acronym, I developed my own acronym just for this presentation. I’m

calling it ITMR. That’s the way to address those five things.

The first strategy is include these individuals, include these team members, as much as

possible. Sometimes we’re the glue that holds everybody together. So, if it means that we

have to go from this person to this person and say hey, this is a data collection sheet,

what do you think? Because the bottom line, are you the one collecting the data? No. It’s

typically the teacher. It’s typically the parent.

I’ll give you an example. I wish I would’ve included the parents in this particular example.

It’s a little kid with -- the little guy with encopresis. And I said to the parents I just want to

know a frequency, how often it’s occurring at home. So, can you just go ahead and write it

on the calendar? Because I’m making the assumption this is easy for them, this is -- when

I went back, they did write it on the calendar. I don’t think they wanted to do it because on

the days that he had an accident, it said Matt S-H-I-T in his pants. On the calendar that

hung on the kitchen wall. So again, I think the parents -- first of all, I had to talk them into

collecting data. I didn’t ask them like, okay, is there some other way that you can give me

this information? I think really it was part of that including.

And also, we talked about that yesterday with the Polk people. You know, this one staff

who -- you know, she had a considerable -- or a difficult time buying into the process and

then she said -- and it was great on the video, I thought it was one of my ah-ha. She was

like well, you shouldn’t include us in the data collection system. But sometimes we’re like

full speed ahead, right?

The other issue is training them on how to collect the data. Sometimes we make -- we

cannot make assumptions that it’s really easy and just say all you have to do is write

down the antecedents, the behavior, and the consequence.

The first-grade teacher that we were talking about? I did that. I gave her a blank ABC form

and thought this was gravy, because she was already writing really great notes. I gave

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that to her. Let me tell you, I got a stack like this big. Now, Kristin loves analyzing data,

and I cannot say that enough, but you know, I really didn’t want to go through all those

words and finding those antecedents and pulling those out. So, I really should’ve gone

back and trained her. This is what needed to be in these particular areas.

And the last two, I think while we can do these directly, motivate and reinforce team

members and kind of be each other cheerleaders, I also think when you have a really

strong team and you’re able to pull everybody together, that in and of itself can be

motivating and reinforcing.

Last night when I was talking to Kristin about this, she said oh, yeah, if I’m working with a

team, I don’t want to let anybody else down. But if it’s my own work I’ll procrastinate as

long as I can procrastinate. So, it’s kind of like the dissertation process versus writing a

paper with somebody else, right? You don’t want to let your team members down. And it’s

kind of that dynamic. You’re there to motivate and reinforce one another and be each

other’s cheerleaders.

So, what do I do about problematic team members during the process? Well, there’s lots

of different strategies. There’s direct strategies, which are those confrontational strategies

and we try to use those after we tried the non-confrontational indirect strategies, right?

So, the first thing that I like to do is okay, I try to ask or try to predict what is it that that

team member needs? It may be something that they’re not comfortable asking for

because it’s really hard to admit our weaknesses, right? Or to admit that we don’t have

the capacity to deal with this kid or do what we decided to do. So, sometimes directly

saying what is it that you need?

It may be more training, like that first-grade teacher. Luckily, we were able to identify like

oh, wait. We have to stop right in our tracks. We never talked to her about functional

behavior assessment and how important it is to look at environment. She’s thinking this

kid is just evil. So, we knew we had to go back and train her.

And also, sometimes people just want to be listened to, or just to say you know what? It is

really hard work. I cannot imagine day in and day out. I don’t know -- I’m not going to

pretend that I know what you’re going through when you’re doing an overnight and he’s

up the entire time having an issue.

So, sometimes -- and I laughed about this when I was looking over this earlier today

because on the way into Lancaster, for about an hour I talked to a parent who had had an

issue, and it wasn’t until about 50 minutes into the call I go wait, she just wants me to

listen. That is really bad. She just -- and the whole time I’m trying every skill that I have.

Okay, I’m going to try these strategies with her and this and acknowledge and ask her

what she needs, and I realized she just wanted to listen and then at the end she’s like

okay, well thanks. I’ll talk to you later. I’m like well, that was really draining. But really

sometimes people just want to be listened, and just want to be heard and just want other

people to know what they’ve been going through, how difficult it really is.

Sharing success stories, I think, is highly important. Yesterday I felt that it was very

important to share that story of somebody that really people thought that, you know, they

were at their end of their rope with this guy and we did a functional behavior assessment

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and it ended beautifully. I mean, this is a guy who went from -- you know, there was a

really great tool in assessing his quality of life. It probably -- you know, his quality of life

would’ve been minimal. And now, you can just tell. I mean, everybody that knows him

well, his parents, and we’re just really hoping that that success story is contagious, and

oftentimes it is contagious.

Showing the data is also part of that success story. I remember that one parent -- I

worked in the home and it was a 17-year-old guy who had -- and you may have heard this

at one of the FBA trainings -- inappropriate excessive verbalizations. He talked all the

time. All the time. And the parents really -- they needed to see their own successes

because they didn’t see it because it wasn’t happening fast enough, and it didn’t go from

100 to 0 as soon as we put all the supports in place. So, they needed to see their

successes and celebrate those successes and that’s kind of my job. And I was, you know,

their little cheerleader and it kind of got them through the process.

The use of humor, I think, is really important especially -- and I can’t stress that enough,

and you have to know your team members in order to do that. Then I’m not going to share

the example for the sake of time and because I’m feeling like it’s inappropriate now that

I’m standing up here.

And also, encourage team self-assessment. And that is saying to the team, how do you

think we’re doing? Do we think everybody here is sharing equal responsibilities? What’s

really important -- and I think I need to go back when I said team composition’s important.

In my experience, having somebody being that facilitator, for lack of better words, or that

leader so that that’s the person that’s going to address these things, that’s the person

that’s going to say oh, well, from an outside person, I’m just wondering, how do you guys

think you’re doing? Do you think everybody’s cool in their own way? Self-assessment may

be enough to get some other people on board. That peer pressure sometimes works.

So, what are those confrontational direct things? And it could be pulling people aside.

Avoiding you statements at all costs. Let’s say I’m sensing that there -- the best example I

have is, there was a team, and this is a story of a colleague of mine -- and from the way

that they explained it, this one teacher, the primary teacher for this student who was the

homeroom teacher, was a toxic team member. And what they meant by that was he did

this at the meeting, and then he left, and nothing was done.

So, finally they had a -- they pulled in a facilitator and they said you know -- and it was

somebody that wasn’t directly related to the team, it was a guidance counselor or

something like that, and said you know, we’re feeling like there’s something going on

here. And in a non-confrontational way, said okay, are there some issues? Because we’re

trying to put these things in place and let us know. We want to know how to support you.

We want to be able to address your needs. And he said you know, it’s just a problem

because you know what I need? I need every day, at the beginning of the day, I need that

half hour of silent reading. That’s why I put that in place because I need to come in, kind

of get my wits about me, get my day started. And he is just on me incessantly and he

doesn’t stop.

And then that last bullet, negotiate a common ground. That team then was able to say --

somebody from the team, the art teacher, said well, he can come and help me get my cart

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ready for the day in that half hour. That gives you your half hour. Would that be cool? And

the teacher said yes.

And my colleague said from then on there really was no problem with that teacher. That

teacher got his needs met and saw that there were team members that were willing to

support him, and then he, in turn, then started becoming more of a participatory member

of that team.

And that was part of -- you know, I think that whole confrontational was they weren’t using

you statements and pointing their finger, but we’re feeling this. Check the person’s

understanding. So, what we’re hearing you say is that you need this half hour in the

morning. That’s easy enough, right? We can work with that.

How do I fade my services and empower the team? This really was important, especially

when I’m thinking about myself as a consultant when I was talking about going into the

Polk Center and working with them. It was really important not only because it was a six-

hour drive for me, but also because I wanted to empower the team because I wanted to

then to use this good work that they did with this guy.

So, really, talking about fading supports, whether it’s -- you know, and we talk about it --

here’s my other thing. If you’ve been to our trainings, you know we have this beautiful little

table that we say when you put supports in place for somebody with challenging

behaviors you put in antecedents supports. You teach them new skills or replacement

skills. You put in consequence strategies and you also put in lifestyle or quality of life

supports.

I am here to say that with the Polk team, we forgot to talk about this yesterday, we also

developed that same table for the support staff. We put antecedents supports in place.

We try to determine what skills do we need to be teaching the staff? We put consequence

supports in place. And lifestyle and quality of life supports in place as well. But we also

made sure, just as we did with fading those supports for the person with disabilities, how

are we going to fade the consultant out? How are we going to fade the outside supports?

And then we let it become more a natural team process. The parents, the teachers.

Pull services out of good times. So, if the kid’s not having problems during recess, are we

going to go there during recess? No. You want to be there to support the team initially and

as long as they need it during the bad times, right?

Yes? Oh, it’s a watch. I thought you were raising your hand.

Building capacity is of uber importance because the more capacity you build with these

people, the more independent they become with their skills. It’s kind of like thinking about

supporting a person with challenging behaviors. Now we’re supporting the staff, right?

Keeping the team focused on the goal, which is independence. And self-monitoring,

teaching the person to self-monitor their behaviors.