Development and evaluation of a training in autism and bilingualism for behavior analysts: A mixed methods randomized controlled study

Autistic children and their families from heritage-language-speaking homes benefit from care tailored to their linguistic and cultural needs. Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) are professionals in applied behavior analysis (ABA) who commonly support autistic children but have reported a lack of knowledge and training in how to support these bilingual children and their families. In addition, how behavior analysts describe their knowledge and experiences in supporting bilingual ABA staff is unknown. Therefore, the present exploratory sequential mixed method intervention study sought to understand (a) the knowledge, experiences, and needs of BCBAs in supporting bilingual ABA staff by conducting focus groups and interviews, (b) the development of a tailored online asynchronous professional development and measure its impact on BCBAs knowledge, self-efficacy, and attitudes related to autism, ABA, and bilingualism through a randomized waitlist control trial, and (c) how findings from the focus groups and interviews helped to develop the tailored professional development and to what extent do post- intervention social validity findings help to understand the quantitative results? Qualitative findings aligned with previous research and highlighted the importance of organizational factors in BCBA's experiences; quantitative results indicated a significant effect on the knowledge and self-efficacy of participants in the intervention group, and social validity findings illuminated additional meta-inferences. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Special Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Martin, Melanie R

Contributors dc:contributor

• Meadan-Kaplansky, Hedda
• Burke, Meghan
• Rispoli, Mandy
• Yan, Xun

• Autism
• Professional Development
• Applied Behavior Analysis
• Bilingualism
• Dual Language
• Multilingualism

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Melanie Martin

Language dc:language

eng, en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/124299

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/124299