Assessing the Clinical or Applied Importance of Behavior Change through Social Validation

TLDR

Applied behavior analysis emphasizes evaluating treatment effects by clinical or social importance, and social validation has been proposed as a method to assess whether behavior changes are clinically meaningful. This paper reviews social validation literature and examines challenges in interpreting normative data and subjective evaluations. Social validation compares a target’s behavior to peers and gathers subjective evaluations, deeming changes clinically important when performance falls within socially acceptable ranges or is judged improved by others.

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.