Evaluating Interventions

Description

Scenario: Evaluating Interventions Very Good Company, an organization that produces widgets, has recently had a decline in the number produced per day and has also experienced an overall increase in staff turnover. You have completed the pinpointing and measurement steps of the problem-solving process and it is now time to design an intervention and select a research design to evaluate the intervention. For your discussion, you utilize the problem-solving model to determine the next steps. You select a research question for your intervention and a research design to evaluate the effect of your intervention and prepare to review your plan with Very Good Company at your next meeting. For your discussion response you should cover the following: Identify the 5 steps of Aubrey Daniel’s problem-solving model in your own words. Include a discussion of the importance of each step. Compare and contrast the AB, ABA, and Multiple Baseline designs. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each. Select an intervention to implement at Very Good Company, with the consideration that most interventions in Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) involve feedback and reinforcement. Choose a research question for your selected intervention. Select a research design to evaluate your research question. Describe why this is the best research design for determining the effects of the intervention. Include a discussion of other considerations within the organization related to the implementation of this research design and intervention. Peer Responses: Review two of your classmates’ posts to assess the following: Critique your peers’ choices of research designs. Did they select the most appropriate designs for the research questions? What are some considerations that they may have missed in relation to using the selected research design at Very Good Company? Cortney Chapman posted Jul 23, 2020 10:40 AM Unit 4 Discussion Board Cortney Chapman The five steps include 1. Pinpoint 2. Measure 3. Feedback 4. Reinforce 5. Evaluate, the importance of each step is to create a simpler way to solve problems. To implement this model, you must first select a pinpoint and begin measuring before you perform the intervention (also could be called feedback and reinforcement) (Daniels, 2016). You would then begin to evaluate your results. This is the most important part, if your results are not what you anticipated then you must change one element at a time and do the entire process over until pinpointed results are met in order for this model to be successful. AB Design is used to show that performance was not going in the right direction until after intervention was implemented. The strength in this design is that the data shows you that the intervention implemented is what is responsible for the change; however, this design has a weakness which some may say the conditions changed because of other factors such as environmental, seasonal, or other changes to explain the differences (Daniels, 2016). ABA Design is more powerful than the AB design because it involves returning to baseline conditions (the final A). Basically, you would implement an intervention or reinforcement and after some time the reinforcement/intervention is removed to see if the increased performance was serving its purpose and the data returns to its previous baseline levels. The issue with using this design is that it would be very rare for someone to want to stop something that is working just to prove that it is working (Daniels, 2016). Multiple-Baseline Design is where several AB designs are implemented at different times, out of all the designs this is the most powerful because you can implement as many AB designs as you want to, to help you determine the cause and effect. I personally think that weakness with this design would not be time sufficient. It is ideal to do this design using several people based on different variables and not every organization is going to be able to do that (Daniels, 2016). Recently there has been a decline in the number of widgets being produced daily, in order to increase those numbers as well as decreasing the employee turn around, I would implement positive reinforcement. This intervention would take a little over a month because I would the reinforcement would only be given if the goal number is reached, once that goal is reached, the employees will be able to earn a free lunch provided by the company. These lunches have the potential to become a weekly thing but only if the numbers continue to get higher. I would first take baseline data on how many widgets are being produced daily by the employees as a whole then implement the intervention to see if the reinforcement works using the AB design. This design will be able to show me the data before the reinforcement and after the reinforcement was implemented, if this intervention does not work then I will start over and see what my pinpoint should be as well as what is reinforcing to the employees. Marjani Muhammad posted Jul 23, 2020 2:55 PM 1. Identify the 5 steps of Aubrey Daniel’s problem-solving model in your own words. Include a discussion of the importance of each step. Step 1- pinpointing. This means to determine the results you want and to specify what exact behaviors needs modification. Step 2- measure. This specifies how data will be collected in terms of frequency, behavior count, rate etc. Without reliable data, intervention cannot be effective. Step 3- feedback. identifies and displays changes in performance or overtime. This step is important as it allows gives the researcher information on when reinforcement is most needed. Step 4- reinforce. This step reiterates the importance of consequence. As we know, behavior is a function of its consequences. This is important to remember, as we want to make sure that we are not inadvertently maintaining unwanted behaviors. Step 5- evaluate. Determine if the intervention is effective by evaluating the changes in behavior against the changes in result. Analyze the data by comparing baseline data to the intervention data. 2. Compare and contrast the AB, ABA, and Multiple Baseline designs. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each. The AB design is also known as the basic single-subject design. It uses one set of baseline data and one set of intervention data. One of its strengths is that it is the easiest single-subject design for someone to implement, but because it lacks replication, determining its effectiveness is limited. ABA design or withdrawal design is an extension of the AB design but adds a second baseline or a withdrawal of the intervention. Its strength will show how effective the intervention or reinforcement is but for a business, it would not be beneficial to withdraw reinforcement if it shows that progress has been made and may also be unethical. It would be best to implement the intervention a second time to demonstrate a strong replication and functional relationship. The multiple baseline design is best used when collecting data on multiple dependent variables. Strengths include the ability to collect a lot of relative data simultaneously and can provide a lot more information on causality between behavior and intervention. However, I think this design may require a little more assistance on data collection. 3. Select an intervention to implement at Very Good Company, with the consideration that most interventions in Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) involve feedback and reinforcement. Choose a research question for your selected intervention. In this case, we would first conduct at PIC/NIC analysis to systematically analyze the “antecedents and consequences influencing behavior” (Daniels, 2016, p. 41). Following that analysis, we’d pinpoint our result as an increase in daily production and a decrease in staff turnover rate. The behaviors will be meeting independent daily goals and completing weekly staff feedback questionnaires. Very Good Company can begin by making sure to aggressively provide immediate positive reinforcement throughout the company. This will help create a positive work environment. Things such as good attendance and team-work will produce public praise and recognition. Additionally, a daily incentives bonus can be implemented. Different goals can be set each day for the staff. At the end of the week, if production goals are met, staff can choose between a catered lunch, with a 30-minute extended lunch period or a catered breakfast with a 30-minute extended lunch period. I would then implement an AB design to graph the baseline and intervention results. 4. Select a research design to evaluate your research question. I believe that the ABAB design would be best. Although our reading discusses ABA design, I think it is important to introduce intervention a second time, after returning to baseline. Replication informs the observer that if the intervention strategy produces the similar results to the first implementation, there is a strong causation between variables and that the data is reliable.