A comparison of staff training procedures. Behavioral applications in the child psychiatric inpatient setting.
Replace lectures with brief role-plays—model, rehearse, feedback, praise—to change staff behavior effectively.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team compared three ways to train child-psychiatric aides. One group sat through a lecture. One group got direct feedback while they worked. The third group used role-play with instruction, modeling, rehearsal, feedback, and praise.
The study ran on an inpatient unit. Staff behavior was watched before and after each training style.
What they found
Role-play training beat the other two methods. Staff who rehearsed skills with feedback showed the biggest behavior change.
Lectures and simple feedback helped a little, but not nearly as much as the full role-play package.
How this fits with other research
Ramer et al. (1977) did something similar seven years earlier. They also used role-play on an inpatient unit and saw large staff gains. The 1984 study adds a head-to-head race between training formats.
Geurts et al. (2008) later showed one 30-minute BST session can hit over 80% fidelity. That finding supersedes the 1984 work by proving you can get great results faster.
Maguire et al. (2022) stretched the model to 25 residential-school staff during COVID-19. They paired BST with weekly performance management and kept near-100% fidelity for a month.
Why it matters
Stop giving lone lectures or vague feedback. Swap at least part of your next in-service for brief role-play rounds. Model the skill, let staff rehearse, give instant praise and correction. You will see bigger behavior change in less time. The method works in hospitals, dorms, and classrooms, and newer studies show even a single 30-minute round can reach mastery.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study sought to determine the most efficient means of staff management by comparing three training procedures: (1) in-service training, using Brown and Presbie's (1974) Behavior Modification Skills, (2) direct feedback of actual staff performance, and (3) role-playing, involving instruction, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, feedback, and reinforcement with an experienced behavior therapist. Direct naturalistic observational procedures were used to obtain behavioral data to eight staff members' (nurses and aides) interactions with children on an inpatient psychiatric unit. The phases of the study, which spanned twenty-one weeks, included: baseline 1, in-service training, in-service plus direct feedback (administered sequentially across subjects), baseline 2, and role-playing. Results indicated that (1) the in-service training had little effect on staff behavior, (2) direct feedback in some cases resulted in increased frequency of appropriate staff responding, including greater use of positivereinforcement and vocalizations, but these gains were not maintained across time, and (3) the greatest gains in staff behavior occurred as a result of role-playing. These results are discussed in terms of both the specific advantages anddisadvantages of each of the training procedures, and the practicality and political issues involved.
Behavior modification, 1984 · doi:10.1177/01454455840081003