The Teacher as Performance Manager of Behavioral Data Collection in the Classroom

ABSTRACT Recording behavioral data is an essential intervention component for students with challenging behavior. However, a large percentage of behavior analysts experience various forms of data collection integrity (DCI) problems: data not collected, not collected as prescribed, and collected with questionable accuracy. There is limited research demonstrating strategies to improve DCI in applied settings, and even fewer studies addressing problematic data collection in special education classrooms. We evaluate the effect of training classroom teachers to apply well‐established performance management strategies (prompting, checking, praising, and correcting, in vivo) on DCI in classrooms supporting students with severe special needs and behavior disorders. Following intervention, we found that all teachers were able to arrange their classrooms to be more favorable for behavioral data collection and apply performance management skills with positive effects. The resulting improvements in DCI were maintained for 12 weeks in 2 of 3 classrooms. An extension of the same study in a novel classroom replicated the original results and demonstrated that adding a positive reinforcement contingency can improve stability of performance management skills with a greater positive impact on DCI. We discuss the benefits of training teachers to function as performance managers of this essential educational task.