Ariel is a 7th grade student who has regularly expressed her dislike for writing and writing conventions in particular. Her educational team has noted that she frequently refuses to use capitalization and even basic punctuation including periods and question marks. Ms. Atkins mentions she tried using a reward system with Ariel to challenge her writing in the language arts class. Ms. Atkins tells

Question

the team she designed a rubric to keep score on how Ariel performed on writing conventions. If Ariel met or exceeded the minimum rubric score on an assignment, she was allowed to listen to her ipad during free reading time. Ms. Atkins said her program had worked beautifully. Ms. Palmer (science), Ms. Leslie (social studies), and Ms. Hart (math), all remarked they had seen absolutely no improvement in Ariel's written work. They decided to try the program in all 3 classes beginning the following Monday using the same rubric and same reinforcement program (listening to her ipad at an appropriate point in class). Ms. Atkins suggested just to make sure they are not overwhelming Ariel, that each of the other teachers introduces the program a different week. Ms. Palmer will start this Monday, Ms. Leslie the following Monday, and Ms. Hart on the 3rd Monday. The teachers agreed they would each measure Ariel's performance with the rubric on the Friday prior to the implementation of the program in their class to serve as reference point for Ariel's improvement.

What type of design would best describe that used in the case study? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

This would best be described as a delayed multiple baseline design across settings, because baseline measures were taken sparingly and only just before the implementation of the intervention.
Students may be tempted to answer multiple baseline across behaviors because capitalization and punctuation are included as target behaviors. However, the rubric score is a single measure.