ASSESSING THE WITHIN-TRIAL TREATMENT INTEGRITY OF DISCRETE-TRIAL TEACHING PROGRAMS USING SEQUENTIAL ANALYSIS

Discrete-trial teaching is a strategy frequently used to teach functional skills to individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Research has shown that the within-trial components of the procedure should be administered with >= 90% treatment integrity to facilitate optimal learning. Usually within-trial treatment integrity is measured using whole-session methods such as percentage of trials correctly administered. This study demonstrated one-step Markov transition matrices as a method of assessing within-trial treatment integrity. All components of discrete trials were coded and time-stamped from video recordings of therapist-learner dyads in their typical setting (home or school). Several types of within-trial treatment integrity errors were identified using the Markov transition matrices, error sequences that could not be identified using a percentage correct analysis. Better identification of errors has the potential both to enhance treatment integrity and to gain efficiency by targeted retraining of therapists. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.