Development and Evaluation of a Decision-Making Tool for Evaluating and Selecting Prompting Strategies

An extensive literature has demonstrated the successful application of various response prompts and prompt-fading strategies for teaching students with developmental and intellectual disabilities. However, few practical resources exist to guide special-education teachers and clinicians in the evaluation and selection of a prompting strategy for a given student and a targeted skill. Across two experiments, we used a multiple baseline across participants design to develop and evaluate a decision-making tool to train 11 special-education teachers and 5 graduate students to evaluate and select appropriate prompting strategies for a variety of students and skills. The graduate students also implemented their selected prompting strategy in brief teaching sessions. Results indicated that the self-instructional manual was effective for improving their evaluation, selection, and implementation of appropriate prompting strategies. Social validity data collected from all participants suggested that they found the manual helpful. Results contribute to the literature on the development of decision-making tools to guide teachers and clinicians in the selection of interventions to use with their students.