For this portion of your project, you will interview at least one member of your fieldwork site organization who is in a supervisory and/or administrative role. You may choose to interview more than one person. You will be asking about the performance of “front-line” employees, i.e., BTs/RBTs at your field site. Objective: The purpose of this assignment is for students to engage in hands-on learning regarding the behavioral assessment process in human service organizational settings. The assessment process involves two separate components, one is a semi-structured interview of a supervisor regarding their supervisees’ performance deficits, using non-technical terminology. The other is the use of a formal assessment tool developed for use in typical ABA human service settings: the Performance Diagnostic Checklist—Human Services (PDC-HS). The ability to use both of these assessment approaches competently will be a crucial component of students’ repertoires as future supervisors, when they must be able to diagnose/assess and intervene upon performance deficits of their own supervisees. This is critical in ensuring that clients are receiving the most effective services possible from their clinical team. How to approach the semi-structured interview: First, avoid using technical behavior analytic jargon. Although most people in your field site are familiar with behavioral jargon, approach this as though you were interviewing a manager at an organization that has nothing to do with behavior analysis. This is an important skill for you to practice across a variety of settings and people, including parents of clients you serve. Ask about some areas of employee performance that need improvement. You should aim to gather information on at least three areas of needed improvement. Plan to include at least two areas related to clinical skills/behavior/results. In other words, do not only obtain information on operational issues such as attendance/timeliness (though you can include these in addition to at least two clinical performance issues). For each area of improvement noted by the supervisor, ask what it is employees should ideally be doing (think of this as the pinpoint or operational definition). And also ask what they are doing instead, that leads to a need for improvement? Also ask how the supervisor knows improvement is needed (i.e., what kind of evidence is there to suggest performance is below expectations)? For each stated area of improvement, ask what kinds of contingencies are in place to either support the desired performance and/or contribute to undesired performance. Again, do not use technical jargon here. Even though you know what we mean by “contingencies,” ask about it in a way that anyone can understand. For example, ask, “What kinds of consequences, both positive and negative, do RBTs experience when they perform adequately? What about when they underperform? Does anything good or bad happen to them based on how they do?” Also ask about antecedents, but in everyday language, such as, “Do they know what level of performance is expected of them?” and, “Are there any kind of reminders or prompts to help them remember what they need to do?” Ask the supervisor to rank the stated areas of improvement in order of importance, along with the rationale for why each is ranked where it is relative to the others. How to approach the PDC-HS: Do this second, after you’ve gathered the above information on the areas the supervisor would like to see improvement. Print out copies of the PDC-HS from Carr et al. (2013) and bring them with you to the interview. You will complete one copy of the PDC-HS for each performance issue identified during the interview above. (Note: you will not need to complete it for absenteeism or tardiness concerns.) Read each question to the supervisor and record their responses on the PDC-HS. Provide any clarification needed for questions where there may be confusion about what it is asking. (Make sure you have clarified any confusion you may have with your instructor before doing the interview!!) You should make note of any additional info that the supervisor provides during this part, and add it to the interview content above as appropriate. Lastly, include an interpretation of the results, in terms of which domains within the PDC-HS were indicated as domains where interventions are most needed. Assignment Submission: Your actual assignment submission should be a write up of the information you gathered during the interview process. You should not write it up as a verbatim interview where you list each question you asked and write out the exact, word-for-word response given to each question. Instead, you will write it up in normal paragraph form, in which you summarize the questions you asked, and the answers provided. If you interview multiple people, you can integrate the info they provided where it overlaps and separate it out where it diverges. For your PDC-HS, you should scan or photograph the completed assessment for each performance issue and submit these as well. Be sure to include the interpretation of the PDC-HS results in your write up.