System-Level Analysis of Evidence-Based Intervention Implementation in Schools

This research will empirically develop and evaluate a set of procedures utilizing principles of applied behavior analysis and organizational system methods to identify and improve evidence-based intervention selection, implementation, and decision-making behaviors of school teams responsible for addressing students’ behavior problems/disorders.

School problem-solving teams are the focus of the intervention and the unit of analysis. Activities take place in 14 K–5 schools in seven school districts in southern Wisconsin. In Year 3, three pilot schools in the same area will implement the fully developed intervention.

A system-focused assessment and intervention will be developed and conducted with 14 school problem-solving teams responsible for addressing the needs of children in Grades K–5 (between the ages of 5 and 12) with identified behavior problems/disorders. School teams are the primary population, and the children will be the secondary population included in the summary outcome data.

The assessment and intervention will be developed from information gathered through team-based direct observation, checklists, inventories, surveys, and key stakeholder interviews. These assessment data will be used to formulate individualized functional analyses for each team in order to determine the reason for any barriers to the team selecting and implementing evidenced-based interventions.

These empirical data will be used to develop an intervention based on principles of applied behavior analysis and then individualized for each problem-solving team in order to increase the uptake of evidence-based interventions focused on students with disruptive behavior problems/disorders.

Outcomes will be assessed relative to the identified function of each school team’s lack of implementing evidence-based interventions and, ultimately, the increased use of evidence-based interventions once barriers to implementation are identified and overcome.