Behavior Management for Improving Academic and Classroom Behavior

Linking Treatment to Assessment: Functional Assessment

Assessment of the contingencies maintaining problem behavior should always precede treatment. Assessment may include a combination of academic, observational, and interview measures. A well-established yet contemporary model of assessment whose results directly lead to treatment recommendations is functional assessment. Functional assessment methods attempt to identify the antecedents and consequences that maintain or suppress behavior, in other words, the factors that determine the occurrence or nonoccurrence of a behavior. If conducted prior to treatment, interventions with increased probability of success may be designed. Treatments based on the functions of behavior are more effective and enduring than arbitrarily chosen treatments. These interventions should incorporate naturally occurring contingencies, which gives them a greater likelihood of fitting into the natural classroom.

Functional assessment may include three major components: indirect data, descriptive data, and a functional analysis. Indirect data include interview data and information from rating scales. Indirect data are the easiest to collect, though the least reliable. They are useful for identifying the problems to be further assessed. For example, interviewing the teacher regarding the situations in which the target behavior does or does not occur is a common method for obtaining information about a behavior function using the indirect method. Descriptive data include direct observation and recording of the antecedents and consequences of behavior in the natural environment. They are necessary to look for patterns in the child's behavior. A functional analysis is the experimental manipulation of test conditions in order to determine the function of a target behavior. The common conditions tested are escape, attention, tangibles, and control. That is, some behaviors occur in order for the child to escape a demand, gain attention, or to receive a reward. Functional analyses typically are conducted in analogue settings outside the natural classroom. They are cumbersome and time consuming but offer the most definitive results as compared to the other components of a functional assessment. A functional analysis is not possible or even necessary for every behavior (single-occurrence behavior) or every child (older elementary student and adolescents). When appropriate, however, the functional analysis can pinpoint the function of the child's misbehavior. The teacher or psychologist is then ready to design an intervention using this information. Children should be taught new ways to achieve the same outcome, for example, raising their hand to get the teacher's attention rather than talking out of turn, or asking for a break to escape a task demand briefly rather than throwing their book across the room.

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