18 Social Validity: Asking for Input on the Goals, Procedures, and Intended Outcomes
Social validity data, which reflect stakeholders’ perspectives on the goals, procedures, and outcomes of the intervention (Wolf, 1978), will be formative for determining whether precorrection is an appropriate way to support this student. Collecting these data before beginning implementation may be informative for modifying certain components to be more supportive or acceptable to the student or other stakeholders.
For example, if a student lets you know that they find it embarrassing to be verbally reminded of the expected behaviors during small group work, you might find a less public way to provide them with this precorrection (e.g., telling them privately, providing a visual prompt) or the precorrection could be delivered to the entire class or small group rather than to an individual student. As part of this module, social validity forms are available for you to use to collect this information from students before and after implementation. The purpose of collecting this information before the intervention begins is to inform refinements with a goal of increasing treatment integrity. Then, asking again after the intervention is underway, it is important to determine if the intervention met expectations with respect to the goals, procedures, and intended outcomes.
In addition to soliciting information from students, we also encourage seeking information from the teacher and parents or guardians–both before the intervention begins and at the end of the first “test.” Following the same logic, if social validity is low before beginning the intervention, provide additional professional learning (including checks for understanding) to increase stakeholders’ knowledge of the strategies as well as their confidence with implementation. Because social validity predicts how well an intervention is implemented (i.e., treatment integrity) and because how well an intervention is implemented influences the overall impact for students (Lane, Kalberg, et al., 2009), it is particularly important to assess social validity before getting started.
