Programming for survival: a meeting system that survives 8 years later.

A professor built a student-run meeting system for a university ABA club.

She wrote a short manual, a chairperson checklist, and set up quarterly peer reviews.

The study tracked how well students ran meetings for eight years with no professor in the room.

Chairperson behaviors jumped from 40 % to 90 % the first quarter and stayed above 85 % eight years later.

Meetings also finished on time 95 % of the time, up from 50 % at baseline.

The package survived three complete student turnovers with zero expert help.

LeBlanc et al. (2019) later turned the same ideas into a practitioner guide. They added written agendas and time limits, showing the 1994 package still works but can be modernized.

Gutierrez et al. (2020) used a similar manual-plus-feedback setup to train staff to run token economies. Both studies prove a slim manual can replace live BST when paired with brief performance checks.

Regnier et al. (2022) reviewed token-economy maintenance and found thinning plus social praise keeps gains alive. The 1994 meeting study did exactly that: quarterly reviews thinned to twice a year while peer praise carried the load.

You can lock in smooth staff meetings with three cheap tools: a one-page script, a laminated checklist, and a five-minute quarterly review. No extra workshops, no yearly retraining. Try it with your next team meeting—write the steps, pick a rotating chair, and schedule peer feedback every three months. If undergraduates kept it alive for eight years, your staff can too.