You would never pick a behavior-reduction procedure for a client without first asking why the behavior happens. Staff performance deserves the same respect. This lesson shows you how to assess the variables behind a performance problem before you choose a supervision intervention.
Why it matters
When staff miss data, skip steps, or turn in late notes, the tempting fix is the one you already like: more training, a reminder email, or a new incentive. Those fixes often fail because they do not match the cause. Retraining someone who already has the skill wastes time and can feel disrespectful. A bonus will not help if the materials are locked in a closet down the hall.
A function-based diagnostic treats the staff member's behavior as behavior. It asks what antecedents, resources, and consequences surround the task, then points you to the interventions most likely to work. Practice vignettes on this task ask you to identify the likely cause and select the intervention that matches it.
Key ideas
- Assess before you intervene. Gather information about the task and the work environment first, through interviews, direct observation, and permanent products such as completed data sheets.
- Separate "can't do" from "can do but doesn't." A useful first question is whether the person can perform the task correctly when asked to under ideal conditions. If not, you have a skill deficit and training is indicated. If they can, you have a performance deficit, and the cause lies in the environment.
- The PDC-HS organizes the search. The Performance Diagnostic Checklist–Human Services (Carr and colleagues, 2013) adapts earlier organizational behavior management checklists to human-service settings. Its questions fall into four areas:
- Training: Does the person know how to do the task, and can they show it accurately?
- Task clarification and prompting: Do they know what is expected, when, and to what standard? Are there prompts or job aids in place?
- Resources, materials, and processes: Are the needed materials available, working, and easy to reach? Does the process make the task practical?
- Performance consequences, effort, and competition: Does anyone notice or give feedback when the task is done? Is the task high effort? Do other duties compete with it?
- Match the intervention to the cause. Training problems call for behavioral skills training. Clarity problems call for task clarification, checklists, and prompts. Resource problems call for supplying materials or redesigning the process. Consequence problems call for feedback, reinforcement, reduced effort, removing a penalty for doing the task, or changes to competing demands.
- Indicated interventions tend to work better. In the original evaluation of the PDC-HS, interventions that matched the identified cause improved staff performance, while interventions that did not match it produced little change.
- Keep measuring. The diagnostic is a hypothesis. Collect performance data before and after the change to confirm that the matched intervention actually worked.
Definitions
- Performance diagnostic: a structured assessment of the variables that contribute to a staff performance problem, used to select an intervention that addresses them.
- Skill deficit: the person cannot yet perform the task correctly, even when asked to under good conditions.
- Performance deficit: the person can perform the task correctly but does not do so consistently on the job.
- Task clarification: making the expected task, timing, and quality standard explicit, often with a written description or checklist.
- Competing contingencies: other tasks or consequences that reinforce doing something else instead of the target task.
- Indicated intervention: an intervention that targets the cause a diagnostic identified.
Examples from a session
Three problems, three different fixes
- Training: At a clinic, Mei, a new RBT, rarely uses the error-correction procedure. When her supervisor asks her to role-play it, she skips two steps. Behavioral skills training until she meets criterion is indicated.
- Resources: In a home program, Andre knows how to take ABC data and can describe the procedure clearly. The family's printer is broken, though, so there are no data sheets at most visits. A tablet form or a supply of printed sheets is indicated. A lecture about data would miss the cause.
- Consequences and competition: At a school site, Rosa can graph session data accurately, but nobody ever reviews her graphs, and billing notes, which are checked daily, eat up her end-of-session time. Regular review with feedback, plus protected time for graphing, is indicated.
In each case the observable problem looked similar: something wasn't getting done. The diagnostic is what told the supervisor which variable to change.
Non-example: A supervisor sees late session notes, decides the technician "doesn't care," and starts a written warning without checking skill, clarity, resources, or consequences. That is a reaction to the problem, not a performance diagnostic.
Common mistakes / exam traps
- Defaulting to training. Training only fixes a skill deficit. If the staff member performs the task correctly in role-play, look at clarity, resources, and consequences instead.
- Blaming motivation or attitude. "She doesn't care" is not an analysis. Describe the conditions around the task, as you would for a client.
- Skipping direct observation. Interviews are a good start, but confirm key answers by watching the task or checking permanent products.
- Stacking every intervention at once. A big package may work, but it costs more effort and does not tell you what helped. Start with what the diagnostic indicates.
- Treating the checklist as the endpoint. The diagnostic suggests a cause; staff performance data confirm it.
Exam trap
When a stem says the staff member performed the task correctly when asked or observed in training, rule out training as the answer. Look for a missing prompt, missing materials, high effort, competing duties, or absent feedback.
Exam trap
Job aid vs. training: a checklist or job aid prompts steps a person can already perform. If staff can list the steps but make errors when they demonstrate them, the gap is skill, and training to criterion is indicated.
Quick check
A BCBA finds that technicians can all demonstrate the new mand-training protocol accurately, have the materials they need, and know when to run it. However, no one ever comments on whether the protocol was run, and the technicians say parent check-ins usually take up the time. Which PDC-HS area best describes the likely cause?