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The Questions About Behavioural
Function (QABF) scale: a reliability study.
Fred Furniss
University
of Leicester, United Kingdom.
Despite general acceptance of
the value of functional assessment in planning interventions
for severe challenging behaviour, questions regarding the feasibility
and validity of experimental analyses in routine clinical practice
(Martin, Gaffan & Williams, 1999) have led to interest in
developing brief functional assessments based on questionnaires
or structured interview of carers.
The best researched of such instruments is the Motivation Assessment
Scale; promising early findings on its reliability have, in general,
not been replicated by subsequent research (see, e.g., Duker
& Sigafoos, 1998). Recently, Matson and his colleagues (Matson,
Bamburg, Cherry & Paclawskyj, 1999) have reported good inter-rater
and test-retest reliability for a new Questions About Behavioural
Function (QABF) Scale.
In this research, the QABF was completed by interview of two
carers for a total of sixty persons with severe developmental
disabilities regarding the challenging behaviour regarded as
most severe or disruptive for that individual. Inter-rater reliability
was assessed by Pearson correlations of number of item endorsements
and total scores for each of the five subscales of the QABF,
and Spearman correlations and percentage agreement calculations
regarding rankings of subscale scores for each individual. Results
are presented overall and for different classes of challenging
behaviour.
Keywords: developmental disabilities,
severe challenging behaviour, functional assessment. |