The DOI matches its Crossref record; 58 of the 58 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Assessing the Clinical or Applied Importance of Behavior Change through Social Validation
Abstract
Applied behavior analysis has emphasized that the effects of treatment interventions should be evaluated in part on the basis of whether changes of clinical, social, or applied importance have been achieved. Recently, social validation has been proposed as a means of evaluating whether behavior changes achieved during treatment are clinically important. In the context of evaluating treatment outcome, social validation consists of two procedures. First, the behavior of the target subject is compared with that of his or her peers who have not been identified as problematic. Second, subjective evaluations of the target subject's behavior by individuals in the natural environment are solicited. Behavior changes can be viewed as clinically important if the intervention has brought the client's performance within the range of socially acceptable levels, as evidenced by the client's peer group, or if the client's behavior is judged by others as reflecting a qualitative improvement on global ratings. The present paper reviews the literature on social validation in applied behavior analysis and discusses problems in assessing and interpreting normative data and subjective evaluations.
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“While we have not focused on intra-rater reliability (i.e., internal consistency of a rater, Flemenbaum & Zimmermann, 1973) within this analysis, the attention to data collection reliability and rater drift is one way to account for intra-rater reliability over time (Kazdin, 1977).”
From Exploring Differences in Measurement and Reporting of Classroom Observation Inter-Rater Reliability (2018) · cites this paper as Kazdin, 1977
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Metadata
- Authors
- Kazdin, A. E.
- Affiliations
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kazdin, Alan E.
- ORCID
- Kazdin, Alan E.
- Venue
- Behavior Modification
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1977-10
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 427-452
- ISSN
- 0145-4455 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-4167
- OpenAlex
- W1977842618
- Cited by
- 1,117
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 26 · 2014: 31 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 25
- FWCI
- 34.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Behavior Modification (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Behavioral and Psychological Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Keywords
- social validation, clinical significance, applied behavior analysis, treatment outcome assessment, peer comparison, reference values, subjective evaluation, global ratings, behavior change
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