Improving goals written for individuals with autism: Preliminary results on assessing meaningfulness and relevance to adulthood
A one-hour BST workshop lifts the adulthood relevance and technical quality of goals you write for autistic clients.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bahry et al. (2024) built a short BST package that teaches staff to write better goals for autistic clients. They ran two small RCTs. Staff got a one-hour workshop, a checklist, and practice with feedback.
Trained raters scored the goals for adulthood relevance and technical quality. The study pitted the BST package against a no-training control group.
What they found
Goals written after the BST package scored higher on both meaning and technical fit. The boost showed up right away and held across both experiments.
In plain words, the goals sounded less like “will point to 10 pictures” and more like “will ask a coworker for help.”
How this fits with other research
LaBrot et al. (2021) and Hassan et al. (2018) already showed that brief BST can train parents and caregivers. Bahry et al. (2024) extends the same logic to the paperwork side of therapy—goal writing.
Grob et al. (2019) taught job-social skills directly to adults with autism. The new study flips the lens: it trains you, the practitioner, to write goals that point toward those same adult outcomes.
No clash here. Earlier papers focused on teaching people with autism; this one teaches the writers behind the goals.
Why it matters
If your goals still read like discrete trial lists, this one-hour package can fix that. Better goals mean clearer road maps for clients, families, and funders. Try the checklist at your next treatment plan meeting.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
AbstractIn general, individuals with autism spectrum disorder have poor outcomes in adulthood on almost any measure assessed. Poor outcomes, in part, may be related to inadequate planning leading up to adulthood, including inappropriate goal setting, ineffective communication, and inadequate involvement of all decision‐makers needed to inform planning. The skills in the repertoires of individuals on the spectrum have been shown in the research to directly impact the trajectory of outcomes. Yet, at present there is next to no peer‐reviewed literature that identifies evidence‐based procedures to teach practitioners how to write meaningful goals that will positively impact these outcomes. The present study therefore examined the effects of a treatment package aimed at improving the quality of goals written by clinicians and students of applied behavior analysis. Overall, this study showed that for at least some participants, the independent variable improved the quality of skill acquisition goals, as measured by expert and advanced practitioner ratings as well as self‐assessed ratings. Both experiments yielded statistically significant increases in both dependent variables for the experimental group, when compared to the control group. These promising initial findings have implications for practitioners who hope to adequately plan for the future of those they serve by targeting those skills that will positively affect outcomes.
Behavioral Interventions, 2024 · doi:10.1002/bin.2006