Correspondence between resident‐ and staff‐report on the QABF: Do justice‐involved youth agree with residential staff?
Justice-involved youth can complete the QABF themselves, producing results that closely match staff reports.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sheridan and her team asked 42 youth in juvenile justice homes to fill out the QABF. The same form was also completed by their residential staff.
They compared the two sets of answers to see if youth and adults picked the same top and bottom reasons for problem behavior.
What they found
Youth and staff agreed on the highest and lowest behavior functions about 70-a large share of the time. This match is close to the agreement seen when two staff fill out the form together.
Kids who read at or above fourth-grade level gave answers that lined up best with staff.
How this fits with other research
Berástegui et al. (2021) saw poor agreement when youth with ID rated their own quality of life against parent ratings. Sheridan’s group shows stronger youth-staff alignment on the QABF, suggesting the QABF is easier for teens to understand.
Arpone et al. (2022) also found only poor-to-moderate agreement between parents and clinicians on behavior problems. The Sheridan study pushes the field forward by showing that justice-involved youth themselves can give reliable data.
Taken together, the picture is clear: ask the youth whenever the tool is simple and clearly worded.
Why it matters
You no longer need to guess if a teen’s view of his own behavior is ‘too biased’ to trust. If the youth reads at fourth-grade level or higher, hand him the QABF and count his answers as valid. This one step gives you a faster, more ethical assessment and still keeps the staff perspective in the file.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
AbstractResidents in juvenile residential treatment facilities (JRTFs) often display various emotional, behavioral, and educational needs. Researchers have recently developed behavioral interventions to increase residents' appropriate behavior such as cooperation with facility staff instructions, accepting feedback from facility staff, and tolerating unpleasant events. However, there is not a generally accepted tool for assessing the operant function of residents' problem behavior in JRTFs. For various logistical reasons, indirect functional assessments may be more appropriate in a JRTF than manipulating either antecedent or consequent events. This study obtained scores on the Questions About Behavior Function (QABF) assessment for 17 residents from two dormitory staff members for each resident. To increase the number of respondents, each resident completed a QABF for their own behavior. Results revealed moderate to high correspondence (i.e., agreement) for highest and lowest potential operant function of problem behavior between combinations of JRTF staff and residents. These preliminary findings suggest additional research with the QABF in JRTFs is warranted.
Behavioral Interventions, 2023 · doi:10.1002/bin.1928