SPCE 691: Supervising Human Service Staff in ABA

This page will cover researching the use of the effectiveness of modeling for the purpose of teaching a skill.

For this topic, ERIC (with its education focus) will be your best choice.  However, examining the psychology behind these training methods, by using PsycINFO is not a bad idea, either.  Try both!

ERIC seems (again) like a good database to start with, since its focus is on education.

We've noticed from searching on our other topics that the phrase "instructional effectiveness" is a good one to use.  If we want to focus on how effective modeling is as a means of instruction, our search might look like this.

When we examine our results, it's clear that other uses of the word "modeling" are throwing our results off.  Many titles have to do with the scientific use of models in analyzing data.

When this happens to me, I use the Subjects feature to look up my term.  The Subject link is located below the search boxes.

After clicking on the "Subjects" link, a new search box will open.  We can type modeling there, as shown above, and press "Search" to see a relevancy-ranked list of preferred subject headings.

In the list shown above, we see the term "Modeling (Psychology)."  Clearly this term will draw the distinction between mathematical modeling and the modeling we're interested in.

When we click on "Modeling (Psychology)," we'll see this list, showing broader, narrower, and related terms for the term "Modeling (Psychology)."  This is a great way to find good search terms to use.

Regarding the use of modeling as a means of instruction, the two terms that stand out to me are the main one of "Modeling (Psychology)" and the related term "Observational Learning."

To ask ERIC to search for records which have either of these terms in the subject/descriptor field:

1. Click the box next to each term of interest (as shown above)
2. Click the "Add to search" button towards the top to add the terms to a search box, with the word OR in between.

You'll see the terms show up in a new search box added to our previous search at the top of the screen, like this:

We actually our new set of terms to replace the first box, which says "Modeling," so we'll click on the X to remove that box.  And then press "Search."

The results of this search seem much more on-target.

ONE way we could limit our search would be to add another term in the third box.  Then the database will go through the records we've found and look for any that have our additional term in them. 

Remember that you are asked to "Identify articles that most closely reflect your target population and knowledge/skills you seek to develop."

We might, for example, add some terms to the third search box, describing either our target population or the skills our training will focus on.

ANOTHER way we could limit our search would be to look at the limiters on the results page just under the search box.  There are options to limit by date or by the type of source (article, book, etc.).

The list of source types will vary, based on the database you're using.  ERIC includes a variety of sources.  For the type of research we need to do, limiting to Academic Journals is a good idea.

Once you've chosen an article based on its record in the database you're searching, bring up the full text of the article by using the "Access now" or "Access options" buttons, or by looking for the "Find It @ Ball State" button, depending on the database.

For more information, check out the information at Find the Full Text of an Article and/or Interlibrary Loan.