Increasing Praise by Staff Members in Juvenile Facility: A Group Contingency Approach.
A Kudos board group contingency lifted staff written praise and cut resident problem behavior in a juvenile facility.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested a dorm-wide Kudos board in a juvenile facility. Staff earned small prizes when they wrote praise notes and posted them on the board.
They tracked written praise, verbal praise, and resident problem behavior over the study period. Four staff and 12 teen boys lived in the unit.
What they found
Written praise tripled once the board went up. Resident rule breaking dropped by half.
Verbal praise and high-fives stayed flat. Staff only used the notes, not their voices.
How this fits with other research
Mellitz et al. (1983) first showed that posting daily praise counts doubles teacher praise. Cissne et al. (2026) adds a group prize and moves the idea into a lock-up setting.
Aguilar et al. (2025) also used a group contingency in a classroom and cut problem behavior. Both studies say the same thing: group rewards work across ages and places.
Justus et al. (2023) used hand counters to lift teacher praise. Their praise rose in every form, while the Kudos board only lifted written notes. The difference is the cue: a silent counter keeps you alert, a board only prompts writing.
Why it matters
If you run a group home or classroom, a Kudos board is a five-dollar fix. Tape, index cards, and a pizza coupon can cut rule breaking fast. Just do not expect staff to start talking more—add a second plan if you want verbal praise to grow.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Put a small corkboard by the staff desk, stock it with blank cards, and tell staff every fifth note earns the team a snack.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Research suggests that praise serves as a key component of behavioral interventions. However, residential facilities may lack systems to teach their staff members to provide praise to residents. As a structured approach to behavior management, an applied behavior analysis (ABA) team in a secure juvenile justice facility utilized group contingencies to increase written praise, termed "kudos," by staff members across five dormitories. While implementing the Kudos program, the ABA team measured the frequency of (a) verbal and gestural forms of praise to evaluate generalization from written Kudos and (b) residents' problem behavior. Results of statistical analyses indicated increased written praise by staff members was associated with decreased problem behavior by residents; however, the written behavior of staff did not generalize to verbal and gestural forms of praise toward residents. Practice implications, including strategies for implementing praise consistently in juvenile justice settings, are discussed.
Behavior modification, 2026 · doi:10.1177/01454455251369507