More human services professionals need to write for publication in peer-reviewed journals. This article discusses some of the perceived obstacles to writing for publication and how to overcome them by implementing a performance enhancement plan. By following a few basic guidelines, practitioners can write productively, publish their work…

This article provides a behavioral systems approach to improve operational performance in health and human service organizations. This article provides six performance truths that are relevant to any organization and a case study from a community mental health network of agencies. A comprehensive analysis, as described here, will help health and…

Chronic absenteeism is a problem encountered by many human services organizations. Large-scale intervention projects to reduce staff absences have incorporated applied behavior analysis methods but there are few studies in the extant literature. In the present study, the authors record staff absenteeism at a specialized school for students with…

Explores whether a client's preference for a certain therapy effects treatment efficacy. Treatment of 64 agoraphobic patients with either exposure in vivo or exposure combined with hypnosis show that, although patients' preference clearly shifted in favor of a combined therapy approach, no effect of preference on outcome was evident. (RJM)

During the past three decades, empirically supported strategies have been demonstrated for the training of competencies - highly specific skills and behaviors that are needed to complete a critical job task. The present article reviews several examples of competency-based training in human service programs and provides guidelines for the…

The human service industry has become a complex industry in which agencies must respond to the demands of the marketplace. To respond to these demands, agencies must develop and maintain their knowledge capital by offering an extensive array of learning opportunities related to their business goals. The corporate university, a contemporary…

Functional assessment has significantly improved the success of behavioral treatment of problem behaviors in adults with mental retardation. Functional assessment methods (i.e., techniques that yield a hypothesis of functional relationships) include direct observation, interviews, and checklists. Functional analysis consists of empirical methods…