Caregiver- and staff-conducted functional analysis outcomes: a summary of 52 cases.
When the clinic FA stalls, trained caregivers can finish the job and yield treatments that slash problem behavior by 96 percent.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Guest et al. (2013) looked at 52 cases where a clinic FA had given unclear results. They taught parents or direct-care staff to run a full, traditional FA in the natural setting. The team then compared the caregiver results with the earlier staff-only data.
What they found
In most of the unclear cases, the caregiver-run FA showed a clear behavioral function. When the team built a treatment from that new function, problem behavior dropped 96 percent from baseline. The takeaway: parents and staff can succeed where the clinic team stalled.
How this fits with other research
Gerow et al. (2021) extends this idea to telehealth. They coached parents through brief FAs at home; four of seven kids got a clear function, but some still needed extra assessment. The 2013 study used longer, full FAs, which may explain its higher success rate.
Henry et al. (2021) refined the FA itself with a staged brief-to-extended protocol. Their 20 cases reached 100 percent clarity, showing that method tweaks plus caregiver help can push success even higher.
Lang et al. (2008) warns that FA results can differ between clinic and classroom. Guest et al. (2013) sidesteps this by letting caregivers test the child right where the behavior happens, boosting ecological validity.
Why it matters
If your clinic FA is muddy, do not keep spinning your wheels. Train the parent or staff to run the same conditions during daily routines. Give them simple data sheets and nightly Zoom check-ins. One clear week of caregiver data can unlock a treatment that cuts problem behavior by 96 percent.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In the present study, caregivers were trained as therapists to conduct functional analyses (FAs) after staff-conducted FAs were inconclusive with 52 participants. Caregiver-conducted FAs identified at least 1 function for problem behavior when staff-conducted FAs were undifferentiated. When results of the staff-conducted FAs were questionable, subsequent caregiver-conducted FAs resulted in an exact match with staff-conducted FA in about 68% of cases but identified new functions in about 30% of cases. Function-based treatments based on caregiver-conducted FAs were effective in reducing problem behavior by an average of 96% relative to baseline. Results suggest that when staff-conducted FA outcomes yield inconclusive findings, using caregivers to conduct FAs is likely to produce differentiated results and ultimately result in the development of effective treatments.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2013 · doi:10.1002/jaba.87