JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT
1983, Volume 3, No. 2
Establishing a Positive Evironment Through
Data Collection
Robert J. Doman Jr.
All of those who attended the seminar
are now familiar with positive environment and how to establish
it in the home. We define a positive environment as one in
which the ratio of four positive responses exists to every
one negative response the child receives. The implications
of a positive environment are extremely numerous; in effect
it encompasses much more than just a child's performance of
his daily duties. It affects his entire attitude, self-image,
and his relationship with his family and peers. It is virtually
impossible to establish a positive environment in the home
without the collection and use of data.
Many families have attempted to establish
a positive environment and failed for various reasons. They
have given up or delayed the program simply because of one
minor setback or of a loss of temper that instilled the idea
of futility in their minds. Realize now that it is impossible
for one to be consistently perfect. For families to operate
under the assumption that they will never say anything negative
or lose their temper, is a farce. No one is continually positive
or 100% perfect. Children err and look to their parents for
correction. With the data-based program it is possible to
establish realistic goals and to keep track of the child's
progress. Achievement of initial goals allows the introduction
of higher goals, that will eventually enable the family to
realize the four-to-one ratio of positive to negative responses.
It is not unusual to discover a family
where the ratio is one positive to twenty negative. Obviously,
in this type of environment a ratio of four positive to one
negative is out of the question. A more realistic approach
would be to establish a one positive to five negative ratio
for the initial week. After accomplishing this goal, then
begin establishing a 2-3 ratio and so on until reaching the
four positive to one negative goal.
After establishing the goal, data becomes
a priority to find out if goals are being achieved. There
is no way during daily activities to accurately decide whether
you are meeting your goals if data is not accurately kept.
We have found "time sampling" to be extremely helpful
in this data collection. Time sampling is merely picking a
particular time during the day and keeping data for those
specific time periods. This is more time efficient than carrying
around paper and pencil twenty-four hours a day. Use this
established time as the specific period in which to review
your data. You cannot use the dinner hour one day and breakfast
the next. There should also be a reinforcement involved in
reaching one's goal.
The data collected by the parent measures
the responses. She should also create a means of reward for
the child having reached his or her goals. If the children
are negative to each other and are actively engaged in trying
to become more positive, parents should collect data from
them and enact the reward-reinforcement theory.
Again define reward: it is a response to a behavior that increases
the frequency of that behavior. Whereas a punishment is a
consequence to a behavior that decreases the frequency of
that behavior. Establish a reward for a child obtaining a
ratio of positive to negative with siblings and parents. If
the reward is indeed a reward, the child's behavior will become
more positive.
Merely attempting to develop a positive
environment is, without a doubt, the most important and significant
step in creating a proper home environment. In an appropriate
home environment, you can eliminate most of a child's negative
behavior. The child will then strive to achieve more positive
behavior in order to obtain more praise and attention from
the parental unit. There will still often be specific negative
behavior that the family needs to identify and correct. Again
the starting point for the elimination of this behavior is
collection of data.
The first step in altering a child's
behavior through punishment or reward is to collect what is
called base line data. To properly collect this data, establish
a specific time period (approximately a week) and collect
information on the frequency of that behavior within that
specific period. For the base line data you are interested
in how often the behavior occurs with you not responding any
different to that behavior than you previously had. Once the
information is documented, take steps in a corrective direction
toward changing the behavior. Using the charting method you
can discover if corrective measures are producing the desired
effect.
If the behavior is one that you totally
wish to eliminate and a form of punishment has been devised,
through our compiling and documentation of the data, a marked
decrease in the frequency of that specific behavior should
be revealed. When such results are perceptively noticeable,
we are reinforced with the knowledge that our efforts are
bearing fruit. If we persevere in our program we will quite
possibly eliminate the undesirable behavior.
Reprinted from the Journal
of the National
Academy for Child Development
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