Comparison and Staff Preference on Teletherapy Versus in Person Therapy

• Main Author: Sulkowski, Allyce
• Format: Others
• Published: OpenSIUC 2015
• Subjects: Autism; Home Based Services; Supervision; Teletherapy
• Online Access: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1792; https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2806&context=theses

Teletherapy is a new form of service delivery that allows practitioners to provide consultation services to clients despite geographical distances. Although Teletherapy had been used in other social service fields, research on Teletherapy within the field of behavior analysis is still relatively new. Teletherapy could advance our field by allowing behavior analysts to provide consultation and supervisions services to a higher number of clients, since Teletherapy would reduce the time and cost spent traveling to different family homes. Research had already shown that Teletherapy can effectively teach parents to implement new skills to their child with autism. This study sought to expand research by comparing Teletherapy supervision sessions with in vivo supervision sessions with four personal support staff. Social validity and treatment integrity were measured in order to assess if staff felt supported during Teletherapy sessions, and to compare any differences in staff performances across the supervision formats. Results show that 75% of the staff felt just as supported during teletherapy supervision as they did during in vivo sessions, and all staff felt that the program used to conduct teletherapy sessions was easy to use. In addition, there was no difference in staff performance for all 4 participants across supervision formats. Future research on Teletherapy is also addressed, and the positive impact Teletherapy can have in advancing the field of behavioral analysis.