Developing a Durable Intervention: Teaching Members of a Student Cooperative to Chair Meetings

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate procedures for teaching members of a student cooperative to run meetings with little or no assistance from the Experimenter. Experiment 1 evaluated the performance of seven meeting chairpersons with and without training and coaching by the Experimenter. Chairpersons completed more of their assigned tasks when the Experimenter was coaching than when he was not. Meeting efficiency and member satisfaction were both better when the Experimenter was coaching. Experiment 2 studied the effects of a maintenance package on chairperson performance in the absence of training and coaching by the Experimenter. The maintenance package included a training manual, a prompting checklist, and performance reviews by another member of the cooperative. Chairperson performance, meeting efficiency, and member satisfaction were all consistently better when the maintenance package was used. Experiment 1 highlights the need for experimenters to analyze their own roles in the interventions they design. Experiment 2 suggests one method for reducing the involvement of the experimenter while maintaining the effectiveness of an intervention.