Analysis of staff reports on the frequency of challenging behaviour in people with severe or profound intellectual disabilities.
Staff gender, experience, and blame style bias frequency reports—always triangulate challenging-behavior data across multiple reporters.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lambrechts et al. (2009) asked staff to rate how often the same clients showed challenging behavior.
They looked at whether gender, years on the job, hours worked, and blame style changed the counts.
All clients had severe or profound intellectual disability and could not self-report.
What they found
Different staff gave different counts for the same person.
Male staff, newer staff, part-time staff, and staff who blamed the client all said the behavior happened more often.
The study shows the report itself can be the variable, not the behavior.
How this fits with other research
Busch et al. (2010) and Griffith et al. (2012) built the SCIBI, a tool that now captures both staff actions and inner reactions.
Their work extends Greet’s warning: if staff traits skew counts, we need a standard lens like the SCIBI to see true levels.
Burrows et al. (2018) saw the same rater drift in toddlers—moms with low mood or less school over-reported autism traits.
Together these papers say: always check who is doing the rating before you trust the number.
Why it matters
Your behavior plan can fail if the baseline count is off. Pair at least two staff in every probe, rotate data collectors, and add direct observation. If numbers jump with a new staff member, question the reporter first, not the intervention.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The main goal of this study was to investigate whether staff members vary in their frequency reports on challenging behaviour concerning the same client. Because staff's approaches of challenging behaviour are affected by a range of staff characteristics, we hypothesised that these staff characteristics could explain this variability between staff members. We used questionnaires to investigate the influence of staff's age, gender, experience in working with people with intellectual disabilities, working hours, professional qualifications, sort of education, and their emotional reactions and beliefs regarding the challenging behaviour. This study involved 152 staff members and 51 clients with severe or profound intellectual disabilities who displayed self-injurious behaviour, stereotyped behaviour, and/or aggressive/destructive behaviour. A part of the variability between staff's reports on the frequency of challenging behaviour was indeed explained by differences between the staff members. Working hours, internal attribution, gender, and experience in working with people with severe or profound intellectual disabilities turned out to be influencing variables. Summarising, staff members differ in their reports on the frequency of challenging behaviour. To get an accurate picture of a client's challenging behaviour, perceptions of several staff members are needed.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2009 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2008.12.004