Assessing the clinical efficacy of a Functional Assessment Checklist: Issues related to reliability, social acceptance and clinical utilit

This project involved the development of a Functional Assessment Checklist (FACT) to be used as a direct observation method when reporting variables associated with the onset of an aberrant behavior. Issues related to reliability, social acceptance and clinical utility of the FACT are addressed.;Subjects for this research were drawn from three groups. Group 1 involved professionals (e.g., psychologists and behavior analysts) with at least two years experience in conducting behavioral assessments. Group 2 was comprised of university students enrolled in a graduate level behavior programming course at East Carolina University. Group 3 was composed of direct care providers working in residential group home settings in Greenville, North Carolina. Each group contained six subjects.;In order to assess inter-rater reliability, groups were subdivided into 3 pairs of raters. Pairs were requested to evaluate, using the FACT form, videotaped vignettes of persons with severe and profound developmental disabilities engaged in some form of aberrant behavior. Participants were also requested to evaluate the clinical acceptance of the FACT using a measure developed by the author. A discussion of the clinical utility of the FACT is also provided.;Initial findings suggest that the FACT demonstrates good social acceptance as reported by this limited sample of subjects. Inter-rater reliability differences are noted between professional and direct care raters and students and direct care raters with the direct caregivers demonstrating poorer overall reliability. Findings suggest a need for further research to determine the significance of such disparities. Limitations of current study and implications for future research are discussed.