Abstract
Validity can be defined as the “approximate truth of an inference” (Shadish, Cook, and Campbell, 2002, p. 33). Decision-making validity can be viewed as the process of marshaling and weighing evidence to support actions (Messick, 1995). At first glance, these definitions alone do not sound too bad as criteria for professional decisions, but in considering response to intervention (RTI) we would need to include the validity of prevention efforts, measures and approaches to student selection, interventions in appropriate intensity sequences, and outcomes, among other variables, since we make inferences (i.e., conclusions) about all of these. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a vast amount of literature that applies to the discussion of decision-making and validity that communicates both the strengths and weaknesses of human choice, the challenges of intervention evaluation, and, therefore, the many possible vulnerabilities of professional roles.
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Keywords
- Decision Rule
- Apply Behavior Analysis
- Validity Evidence
- Social Validity
- Functional Communication Training
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Barnett, D.W., Hawkins, R., Prasse, D., Graden, J., Nantais, M., Pan, W. (2007). Decision-Making Validity in Response to Intervention. In: Jimerson, S.R., Burns, M.K., VanDerHeyden, A.M. (eds) Handbook of Response to Intervention. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-49053-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-49053-3_8
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