Institutionalization and Response Maintenance in Organizational Behavior Management

Abstract

A review of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management(1991–2002) was conducted to determine to what extent researchers in OBM programmed for “institutionalization” of applied interventions. Criteria for the term “institutionalization” were derived from McSween and Matthews (2001), and Grindle, Dickinson, and Boettcher (2000). Four dependent measures of institutionalization were developed that addressed the extent to which internal staff was involved in the design of the intervention, whether in-house employees were trained in implementing any component of the intervention, and whether interventions incorporated formal systems of collecting data or dispensing consequences that were overseen by internal personnel. Data on intervention effectiveness and maintenance of intervention effects were collected. Results indicated that the majority of interventions incorporated at least one institutionalization element, and that the average study incorporated two institutionalization elements. A statistically significant outcome was obtained for a regression analysis in which number of institutionalization components in an intervention was used as a predictor variable, and effect sizes calculated between baseline and intervention phases was used as a criterion variable. A non-significant regression coefficient was, however, obtained when effect sizes calculated between baseline and maintenance phases were used as a criterion variable, and number of institutionalization variables as predictor. The failure of the regression analyses focused on effect sizes calculated between baseline and maintenance phases to reach statistical significance may have been due to the low number of studies that were included in the analyses (n= 7).

Key Words:

• Institutionalization
• response maintenance
• organizational behavior management
• response generalization