Functional Behavioral Assessment in Consultation: A Comparsion of Verbal Communication Patterns

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Date

2009-12-04

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Abstract

Verbal communication allows individuals to share information during consultation. Although there have been several studies investigating verbal communication patterns in traditional behavioral consultation, there have been very few investigating verbal behavior in its newer variants. Thus, the purpose of this study was to document and compare consultants’ message control and relevant content used in two types of school-based behavioral consultation. The first type of consultation was considered a traditional behavioral/ “consultation as usual†model. The second type was behavioral consultation with an added functional behavioral assessment (FBA) component, which involves a comprehensive method of assessing a client’s behavior through closely examining antecedents and consequences of the behavior (DuPaul et al., 2006; Jitendra et al., 2007). Verbal communication patterns in 16 Problem Identification Interviews were coded using the Consultation Analysis Record (Bergan & Tombari, 1975). Two hypotheses were posed: (a) consultants in the consultation condition with FBA would use greater message control than those consultants in the traditional behavioral consultation condition, and (b) consultants in the FBA condition would discuss more behaviorally-related topics than consultants in the traditional condition. Findings revealed that consultants did not use more message control in the FBA condition than in the traditional consultation condition. In fact, there was an indication that more control was used in the “consultation as usual†condition. Thus, the first hypothesis was not supported. However, as expected, findings indicated that consultants do cover more behavioral-related topics in the consultation condition with FBA. Future research considerations and limitations were discussed. Implications were provided, but are limited due to the small n, exploratory nature of the study.

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Keywords

nonparametric statistics, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, Indices of Consultant Effectiveness, elicitors, process variables

Citation

Degree

MS

Discipline

Psychology

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