Preparing staff to enhance active participation of adults with severe disabilities by offering choice and prompting performance during a community purchasing activity.
One brief BST session lets staff instantly offer choices and prompt adults with severe disabilities during real community shopping trips, with skills still strong a month later.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors trained direct-care staff to give adults with severe disabilities more choice and help during real restaurant trips.
One 90-minute meeting covered a short manual, a video, role-play, live feedback, and a pocket checklist.
Staff then took adults to buy lunch while observers scored how often choices were offered and prompts were given.
What they found
Right after training, every staff member jumped from almost zero to near-perfect choice giving and prompting.
Adults picked more items and paid with fewer errors on their own.
Gains held one month later with no extra coaching.
How this fits with other research
Hanniffy et al. (2025) later used the same BST steps with dementia-care staff in a home, showing the package works across very different settings and diagnoses.
Clayton et al. (2019) trimmed BST to just ten minutes for DTT training and still hit 97 % accuracy, proving you can go even shorter if time is tight.
Briggs et al. (2024) reviewed 51 studies and found most labs now drop or reorder parts of BST to save time; the 2001 full package remains the gold standard when you need both fast results and strong maintenance.
Why it matters
You can copy this one-session plan on Monday. Hand the staff a one-page script, watch the video together, practice in the break room, and give live feedback during the first real outing. Adults get more control, staff feel confident, and you collect solid maintenance data without follow-up booster sessions.
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Join Free →Email staff the 4-step lunch script, watch the 3-min video together, rehearse once in the office, then tag along on the next restaurant run to give live praise and tweaks.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a multicomponent staff training package on the number of choice responses and performance responses made by adults with disabilities in a community purchasing activity. The multicomponent training package included an inservice (written manuals, a verbal explanation of the information, role play activities, and video examples) performance feedback sessions in the community context, and self-monitoring instruction. Primary data were collected on how each staff offered choices and prompted performance with an individual with severe disabilities in three different fast food restaurants per week. Secondary data were collected on the number of choices individuals with disabilities made and the level of their performance during a purchase in a fast food restaurant. The findings showed that all four of the staff did not give opportunities for choices and used intrusive prompting or performed the skill for the person in baseline, but mastered these skills the first probe after the training sessions. In addition, the staff generalized offering choices and prompting performance across settings and adults with disabilities and maintained the skills. Also, the adults with disabilities increased the number of choice responses they made as well as their level of performance (compared to baseline) after the staff received the intervention.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2001 · doi:10.1016/s0891-4222(00)00065-2