Reference no: EM133732141

Case: As a behavior analyst who works for a public school system, you have been asked to help design a classroom management system for a special education classroom with 12 students in 2nd- 4th grade. These students are often out of their seats during instructional time, do not complete their academic assignments in totality, talk aloud inappropriately, and engage in mild forms of aggression and property destruction such as ripping papers, throwing pencils, kicking tables, and pinching other students.

You decide to address this scenario by practicing steps in the scientific method. First, you do some background research on the topic, and this reveals that classroom management issues have been addressed successfully in the past through the use of a token economy (i.e., a system in which appropriate behaviors earn tokens that can be exchanged for a range of backup reinforcers such as small prizes or treats, extra recess time, fun jobs in the classroom, movie time, etc.. Each backup reinforcer is worth a certain number of tokens).

Based on this research, you'd like to design and implement a token economy system in the current special education classroom.

Question:

You must pick one specific target behavior that you will measure during your experimental evaluation. Provide an operational definition of the behavior and say why it would be important to measure that behavior (i.e., what is the social significance of the behavior)?

You must choose a method of directly measuring the behavior and state why the method you chose is appropriate for that target behavior.