The training and validation of youth-preferred social behaviors of child-care personnel.
A short BST cycle that lets youth judge staff can turn average workers into kid-approved pros.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team picked seven social moves that kids say they like. Staff learned to smile, give reasons, offer help, and four more.
Training used model-rehearse-feedback. Youth rated staff before and after. The goal: staff act like the best house parents.
What they found
After BST, staff hit high levels on all seven moves. Youth ratings jumped to the same range given to veteran teaching-parents.
Gains held without extra coaching. Kids simply liked talking with the trained adults more.
How this fits with other research
Morosohk et al. (2025) shows BST still works in the same setting, but for safety tasks like room searches. The method travels from social to security jobs.
Luna et al. (2022) tried a lighter BST package for praise in juvenile dorms. Praise rose a little, youth behavior stayed flat. The 1977 full package plus youth feedback seems needed for big change.
Baum (2002) added resident self-management to staff BST. Staff improved, kids did not. Together the papers say: train staff first, then add youth skills if you want child behavior to move.
Why it matters
You can copy the seven-item checklist and the youth-rating step in any group home or classroom. Ask the kids what friendly staff do, teach those moves with model-rehearse-feedback, and let the youth score you. One short cycle can lift staff rapport to veteran level and keep it there.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This research sought to identify, train, and validate social behaviors preferred by youths to be used by youth-care personnel (called teaching-parents). With training, consistent increases in seven preferred behaviors were observed for the six teaching-parent trainees. These behaviors included offering to help, "getting to the point", giving reasons why a behavior is important to a youth, providing descriptions of alternative behaviors, positive feedback, smiling, and positive motivational incentives (i.e., points for task mastery exchanged for tangible reinforcers). Increases in these behaviors correlated with increases in the youths' ratings of the quality of the trainees' interactions. Posttraining levels of preferred social behavior and youth ratings for trainees also compared favorably with levels for successful professional teaching-parents. These results suggest that teaching-parents can be successfully trained to interact with youths in ways that are preferred by the youths.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1977 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1977.10-219