Developing a Change-Sensitive Brief Behavior Rating Scale as a Progress Monitoring Tool for Social Behavior: An Example Using the Social Skills Rating System-Teacher Form

Research has been unsuccessful at revealing an analogue to curriculum-based measurement in the area of progress monitoring for social behavior. As a result, there is a need to develop change-sensitive, technically adequate, feasible progress monitoring tools for social behavior that represent general outcome measures of performance. The purpose of this research was to develop and evaluate the technical adequacy of a brief behavior rating scale (BBRS) that contained change-sensitive rating items. Using data from a randomized controlled study, extant rating scales were analyzed according to four change-sensitive metrics to detect a pool of rating items for inclusion in a BBRS. Next, successive iterations of BBRSs were analyzed to determine how few items a BBRS is capable of containing while maintaining adequate reliability and criterion-related validity. Results revealed that the change-sensitive metrics successfully identified several items upon which students demonstrated change in response to an intervention. Also, results indicated that a BBRS can have as few as 12 items and maintain adequate reliability and criterion relatedness. The implications of these results and directions for research on the use of BBRSs as progress monitoring tools for social behavior are discussed.