Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Studies

First Advisor

Katie Wolfe

Abstract

Currently, there is considerable research highlighting less than ideal outcomes for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities across many facets of daily living. The field of behavior analysis has the potential to meaningfully impact outcomes for these individuals if the focus of service provision is improving quality of life. The purpose of this multiple manuscript dissertation is to describe three cohesive research projects intended to contribute to advancing the field of applied behavior analysis towards centering quality of life in service provision. The first project was a systematic literature review which explored the presence of both quality of life and social validity in behavior analytic intervention literature. Overall results reveal the construct of quality of life is increasingly referenced in the literature, but assessment of the construct remains low and stagnant. These results highlight a gap in the research which has the potential to impact service provision in behavior analysis. To explore that potential impact, the second of the three projects was a practitioner survey intended to gather perspectives and practices of behavior analysts relative to quality of life and social validity. Results of the survey align with those found in the literature review, with most respondents reporting consistently assessing social validity, but were also largely unaware of available quality of life assessment tools. Common barriers to assessing social validity and quality of life were lack of funding, lack of time, and lack of training. The findings from these first two projects support the need for research that focuses on efficient ways to center quality of life as a guiding construct in behavior analytic service provision. Therefore, the final project in this dissertation will aim to explore the impact of a brief training on behavior analysts’ utilization of quality of life assessments in practice.

Rights

© 2026, Aaron Randall Check

Download

Share

COinS