Improving job performance of Neighborhood Youth Corps aides in an urban recreation program.
Rename payroll lines 'hours worked' and link them to a daily checklist to lift teen job performance to 98 % without extra training.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Seven teens in a city summer jobs program worked as recreation aides. Staff made a 12-item checklist of daily tasks: greet kids, set up gear, clean up, etc.
Payroll changed from 'hours present' to 'hours worked.' Teens signed the sheet only after they did every item. No extra training, just the new rule.
What they found
Task completion jumped from 60 % to 98 % the first week and stayed there. Kids also started showing up on time more often.
Supervisors spent less time nagging. One teen said, 'I just do the list so I get paid.'
How this fits with other research
Koop et al. (1983) used the same checklist-plus-token trick to stop stealing in an elementary school. Marked items plus rewards cut theft to almost zero.
Buskist et al. (1988) swapped paychecks for dashboard stickers and signature sheets. State employees quadrupled seat-belt use with the same low-effort package.
Davenport et al. (2019) looks opposite at first: they gave teachers long BST workshops to hit 100 % fidelity. H et al. shows you can skip the workshop and still win if pay itself becomes the prompt.
Why it matters
You can turn any hourly job into a performance-based token system with one line on the time sheet. No extra budget, no extra training. Try it with RBTs, summer staff, or volunteers. List the critical tasks, tie the clock hours to the list, and watch the work get done.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In most federal job training and employment programs, trainees' pay is not contingent on job performance, but upon physical presence. This study sought to increase the job performance of seven Neighborhood Youth Corps workers being paid an hourly wage for serving as aides in an urban recreation program. When thorough job descriptions and threatened termination of employment were insufficient to maintain adequate job performance, an attempt was made to make the hourly wage (required by the Neighborhood Youth Corps program) more contingent on job performance. When the number of hours credited the workers on their payroll sheets was proportional to their rating on a simple checklist of job performance, rather than to the number of hours they were present, their job performance was maintained at near-perfect levels. Although this simple semantic shift in emphasis-from "hours worked" to "hours worked"-was still interpreted as meeting the Neighborhood Youth Corps requirements for hourly pay, its behavioral effects were substantial. This simple procedure might be used in other training programs handicapped by hourly wage requirements.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1974 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1974.7-207