Good Behavior Game
Study: Rebok et al. (1996)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

The study used data from an epidemiologically defined study of students in the Baltimore City Public School System who participated in a randomized field trial as first and second graders. In this trial, two universal preventive interventions were tested with two subsequent cohorts of first-grade students entering first grade in 1985 and 1986. Two classroom-based interventions were tested separately. First, five urban areas in Baltimore were identified for the study. Within each urban area, three or four schools were matched with regard to census tract, school level, and first- and second- grade data. A total of 19 schools were randomly assigned to serve as 1) schools in which the Good Behavior Game (GBG) would be tested independently of Mastery Learning (ML) (six schools), 2) schools in which ML would be tested independently of GBG (seven schools), or 3) schools that would serve as external control schools in which neither of these interventions would take place (six schools). Second, children were assigned to classrooms within each school by the school administrator, who used an alphabetized list to sequentially assign children to classrooms. The third stage of the design involved random assignment of first-grade classrooms and teachers to an intervention condition within each school after baseline assignments but before the intervention began. This led to the creation of intervention classrooms and control classrooms (which were called internal GBG or ML controls) in each participating school. In this submission, we focus on students in the GBG condition and their internal control counterparts. Students enrolled in ML classrooms are not included.

Describe how students were identified as being at risk for academic failure (AI) or as having emotional or behavioral difficulties (BI):

First grade students were rated by their teachers using “Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation-Revised (TOCA-R). TOCA-R measures each child’s adequacy of performance on the core social tasks of the classrooms. The three central domains on which teachers rate each child’s performance over the previous three weeks are aggressive behavior, disruptive behavior, shy behavior, and concentration problems. The items were rated using a 6-point frequency-based scale, with items ranging from “almost never” to “almost always.” Positive items were reversed to allow a consistent level of adaptation among items. After reversal, 1 reflected adaptation and 6 reflected maladaptation for all items.

ACADEMIC INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• below the 30th percentile on local or national norm, or
• identified disability related to the focus of the intervention?

%

BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• emotional disability label,
• placed in an alternative school/classroom,
• non-responsive to Tiers 1 and 2, or
• designation of severe problem behaviors on a validated scale or through observation?

%

Specify which condition is the submitted intervention:

The Good Behavior Game is a classroom team-based behavior management strategy that promotes good behavior by rewarding teams that follow productive standards of student behavior. After baseline measurement of behavior, children were assigned to one of three heterogeneous teams in each classroom and points were given to the team for precisely defined misbehavior. The teacher determined team divisions and team membership, making sure that teams equally contained aggressive/disruptive children and social isolates. The goal of the strategy was to encourage students to manage their own behavior and the behavior of their teammates during group activities driven by mutual self-interest. While the GBG was in progress in the classroom, the teacher assigned a checkmark on the blackboard next to the name of a team whenever one of its members displayed one of the specified inappropriate or disruptive behaviors. A team could win the game if the total number of team checkmarks did not exceed four at the end of the game period. During the first weeks of the intervention, the GBG was played three times each week for a period of 10 minutes. Over successive weeks duration of the game increased approximately 10 minutes per game period every 3 weeks, up to a maximum of 3 hours.

Specify which condition is the control condition:

Teachers in the first-grade classrooms in the comparison condition continued their usual instructional and behavior management practices throughout the year.

If you have a third, competing condition, in addition to your control and intervention condition, identify what the competing condition is (data from this competing condition will not be used):

A second intervention, Mastery Learning (ML), was tested independently of GBG in seven schools. ML and GBG were not compared with each other and were only compared with their internal control (control classrooms within the schools in which the program was in place), and external control (control classrooms from the six schools in which neither intervention was implemented).

Using the tables that follow, provide data demonstrating comparability of the program group and control group in terms of demographics.

Grade Level

Race–Ethnicity

Socioeconomic Status

Disability Status

ELL Status

Gender

What method was used to determine students' placement in treatment/control groups?

Random

Please describe the assignment method or the process for defining treatment/comparison groups.

Dolan et al. (1993): Within each of the five urban areas, the three or four most similar schools were identified for random assignment to three intervention conditions: one to GBB, one to ML, and the other one or two schools to an external control condition with no experimental intervention activities. First-grade classrooms within the intervention schools were assigned to the interventions at random. In addition, the school principals agreed to assign randomly the entering first-grade children to classroom membership to obtain balanced distributions for gender, preschool and kindergarten (K-level) experience, K-level conduct grades, and K-level achievement test scores. Therefore, both classrooms and students were randomly assigned to intervention status. Rebok et al. (1996): From a total of 19 schools, the three or four most similar schools were identified within each of the five urban areas for random assignment to three intervention conditions: one school to GRB, one to ML, and one to an external control condition with no experimental intervention. To avoid confounding of intervention status with school effects, we divided classrooms in GBG and ML intervention school into two types: those that received the intervention and those that served as internal control classes. Individual first-grade classrooms were randomly assigned to intervention or internal control within the intervention schools. Before beginning the intervention work, the school principals randomly assigned the entering first-grade children to classrooms. Randomizing backed up by corrections in assignments as needed produced very similar classrooms of children, at least at the beginning of the year. Gender, preschool and kindergarten level, and conduct grades were assessed to ensure good balance.

What was the unit of assignment?

Teachers

If other, please specify:

Please describe the unit of assignment:

What unit(s) were used for primary data analysis?

Schools
Teachers
Students
Classes
Other
If other, please specify:

Please describe the unit(s) used for primary data analysis:

How was the program delivered?

Individually
Small Group
Classroom

What were the background, experience, training, and ongoing support of the instructors or interventionists?

The interventionists were professional teachers who taught in first or second grade classrooms. Teachers varied in terms of their academic background, credentials, certificates, and years of teaching. Teachers received 40 hours of training and support during the year.

Describe when and how fidelity of treatment information was obtained.

Due to the age of the initial trials, fidelity of treatment information was not collected or published. Implementation data focused only on duration of games, number of games played, and other logistical information. Since the initial trials, fidelity measures have been developed and validated in other trials, such as the fidelity checklist, a five-point scale rating the quality and occurrence of implementation behaviors (α = .80); however, the original trial predates the development of these tools.

What were the results on the fidelity-of-treatment implementation measure?

Fidelity of treatment information was not obtained

Was the fidelity measure also used in control classrooms?

Fidelity of treatment information was not obtained from the GBG or control classrooms.

For any substantively (e.g., effect size ≥ 0.25 for pretest or demographic differences) or statistically significant (e.g., p < 0.05) pretest differences, please describe the extent to which these differences are related to the impact of the treatment. For example, if analyses were conducted to determine that outcomes from this study are due to the intervention and not pretest characteristics, please describe the results of those analyses here.

Please explain any missing data or instances of measures with incomplete pre- or post-test data.

If you have excluded a variable or data that are reported in the study being submitted, explain the rationale for exclusion:

California Achievement Test-Reading. Reading achievement was assessed by the total reading score from the California Achievement Test (CAT, Forms E and F). However, achievement is not the target outcome of GBG, so the variable has been excluded for this reporting. The peer-rated shy behavior was also excluded from reporting because the three items (is too shy, plays alone, has few friends) do not function well as a single measure, even though the internal consistency of the construct is 0.74, higher than the recommended threshold.

Describe the analyses used to determine whether the intervention produced changes in student outcomes:

Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) methods were used to test the effects of the GBG intervention on its proximal behavior targets within gender. Boys and girls were tested separately because the temporal regression of spring values on fall values differs significantly in slope for almost all of the key variables. Pooling the genders sharply violates the assumptions of analysis of covariance. GBG was compared separately to each of its controls because the control groups were not considered to be poolable. The differences between the control groups, which in some cases were quite large, were not allowed to confound the comparison of the intervention with each control.