An evaluation of functional assessment of the behaviour of students with adhd in a mainstream classroom

The overall aim of this study was to replicate and extend Hoff, Ervin, and Friman (2005) and to investigate whether a functional assessment, including the intervention, could be implemented within a mainstream New Zealand classroom, with students diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and with the teachers implementing the interventions. Experiment 1 included 2 participants, Joel diagnosed as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Brad who met study inclusion criteria. Descriptive assessments (based on interviews and observations) of the functions of the target behaviours were conducted to produce hypotheses. Two interventions for each student, based on these hypotheses, were selected in collaboration with the class teachers. The interventions were implemented, first singularly and then in combination, using a multiple-baseline design with alternating treatments after the baseline period. They all decreased target behaviours to some degree. One intervention, the token economy, was the most effective with both students. Social acceptability questionnaires showed all procedures were acceptable but of the interventions the token economy was the least favoured by teachers and most favoured by students. Both participants in Experiment 2 were diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 and also compared hypotheses about the function of behaviour resulting from the Motivation Assessment Scale to those from the descriptive assessment as used in Experiment 1. The Motivation Assessment Scale provided a different hypothesis for one student and it is suggested that this scale is not useful with these students. The two interventions were selected for each student based on the hypotheses. These were designed to be easier to implement and to have more student involvement in their implementation than in Experiment 1. A multiple-baseline design with alternating treatments after the baseline was used and each treatment was evaluated alone. Three of the four interventions decreased target behaviour, the exception was self-management. The social acceptability scores for these interventions were high for both the teachers and students. The overall findings replicated Hoff et al.'s (2005) findings and showed that functional assessment of behaviour could be successfully used with students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in a mainstream classroom. They also showed that the teachers could successfully implement the interventions derived from the hypotheses to decrease target behaviours and that decreasing the difficulty of implementation of the interventions increased the acceptability of the interventions by the teachers