Understanding Communication Intervention for Young Children with Autism and Their Parents: Mixing Behavioral and Social Validity Findings

We retrospectively analyzed data from a pilot study that examined the impact of the Internet-based Parent-implemented Communication Strategies (i-PiCS) program (Meadan et al. in Journal of Early Intervention, 2016) on two families whose children primarily used unaided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The purpose of this analysis was to explore possible explanations for discrepant findings between behavioral data and social validity data in single-case research. These divergent findings were revealed when we attempted to mix two methods to make assertions about intervention effectiveness. Guided by two hypotheses, we recoded the original pilot study video recordings by introducing new dependent variables that were linked to information gleaned from the social validity assessment (i.e., self-reports by the parents and interventionist). After assessing these new dependent variables, we found support for improvement produced by the i-PiCS program that had not been identified in the original observational recording. We present the methods and results of this secondary analysis and discuss the potential value of using mixed methods to combine observational behavioral data with self-report social validity data in behavioral research.