SPCE 691: Supervising Human Service Staff in ABA

You have a several large assignments in SPCE 691.

This page of the guide provides general suggestions for doing research on a variety of topics in your field.  It's a good place to start so that you understand the tips mentioned later.

The Literature Review & SJDEI assignment requires you to find recent literature on your topic.  Visit this page for specific suggestions for the research you need to do:

• Literature Review & SJDEI

These two topics will come up in assignments later in the semester:

• Research on the effectiveness of personalized system of instruction
• Research on coaching and performance feedback for teaching a skill

These other topics may be useful, though, as well:

• Research on the effectiveness of instruction with PowerPoint
• Research on the social validity of training methods
• Research on the effectiveness of using modeling as a means of instruction
• Research on the effectiveness of roleplay as a means of teaching a skill

For starters, please remember that doing library research can take a long time.  Allow yourself a big chunk of time, so that you can find the resources you need.  And remember that some documents may need to be requested from other libraries (through Interlibrary Loan), which takes several days.

Additionally, bear in mind that research is an iterative process, requiring you to continually search, evaluate and revise.  As you search and read what you've found, you're able to improve your searches using terms and ideas you've found in your results.

When you're doing academic research, start on the Ball State University Libraries' homepage.  Then look for the Databases link.  Use the options under the "Subjects" drop-down menu to explore the available resources.

There are two principle research databases in the field of applied behavior analysis: ERIC (under the Education category) and APA PsycINFO (under the Psychology category).  Try both of them, but depending on your topic, you may find that one is more helpful than the other.

While you can use the same general search techniques in both databases, be alert for differences in terms used.

OneSearch, the Ball State Libraries' discovery tool, allows you to search many, many of our article databases, all at the same time.  It's also vital to know about.

The words you use as your search terms have a big effect on the relevance of the results that you get.  So choose carefully!

• Start with terms used in the topic description.
• Then think of other ways you can describe that topic such as: 
  • direct synonyms (ex. teenagers, adolescents)
  • related terms (ex. mainstreaming, inclusion)
  • broader or more specific terms (ex. autism, developmental disorders)

• It may be helpful to consult:
  • a thesaurus,
  • class readings,
  • titles or description of articles you find in a database that look promising. 
  • Subject headings are super-helpful!

Unlike Google and OneSearch, library research databases like ERIC and PsycINFO assign subject headings to each record, indicating the focus of the article.

When you're trying to come up with good terms to search on, THIS is the place to look!

When searching in a database, put quotes around phrases of two or more words where it's important to keep the words together.  Then your words will be searched as a unit; it prevents the database from searching for the words individually.

So, when searching on a topic this can be important:

• "zero tolerance"
• "experimental function"
• "applied behavior analysis"

It's also helpful when searching for a title -- of a governmental act, an organization, an article, etc.

• "education for all handicapped children"
• "national autism center"
• "evidence-based practice in autism educational research: can we bridge the research and practice gap"

CHOP, DROP, and OR is a method for constructing your search on a topic.  You use it with a database's Advanced Search form (which has multiple search boxes).  While your topics may not always be complex enough to really need it, it's a technique that's really good to know about.

Here are links to CHOP, DROP, and OR tips:

• CHOP, DROP, and OR method...illustrated
• Constructing and revising database searches: An example

Library databases very often have a list of terms they use in describing what each entry in their database (be it article, book, etc.) is about.  This list of terms is called a Thesaurus and the terms in the thesaurus are often called subject headings or descriptors.

The reason having agreed-upon terms is useful is because authors may use different ways to refer to the same thing.  Having one accepted term applied to all items on the same topic allows one search to bring up everything on a topic, regardless of the words the authors may have used.

For example, there are many ways to refer to the act of helping someone in choosing a career.  Some authors may call this career guidance, or career counseling, and others may use vocational counseling, or vocational guidance.  By consulting the thesaurus in the PsycINFO database, we can learn that PsycINFO uses the term occupational guidance.  All the records on this topic will have the phrase "occupational guidance" in the descriptor field, regardless of how the authors may have expressed it.  This is very  powerful!

A thesaurus is also helpful because it can help to guide you to related terms, as well as narrower or broader terms to help you to construct good, strategic searches.

What if I find a ton using these techniques?

• Narrow your list by using terms that show up in the Descriptor/Subject heading field, AND changing the drop-down menu to say “Descriptors” or “Subjects” (depending on the database you’re using).   That tells the database to only retrieve articles where my terms show up in the subject field, and (therefore) are the focus of the article.
• Remove some of the OR terms which are not your favorites.
• Consider removing an entire set of terms.

What if I need to find more articles?

• Look for more possibilities by mining the list of references at the end of an article that has been helpful (Just take an article title and plug it into OneSearch with quotes around the title to see if we have access to it.)
• See if anyone has cited an article you like by using Web of Science and searching on your article title (in quotes! Of course).  Then click on “Times Cited” to see records for articles which cited yours.
• Add some more synonyms or related terms with OR.