Evaluation of the class pass intervention for typically developing students with hypothesized escape-motivated disruptive classroom behavior

The aim of this study was to evaluate the Class Pass Intervention (CPI) as a secondary intervention for typically developing students with escape-motivated disruptive classroom behavior. The CPI consists of providing students with passes that they can use to appropriately request a break from an academic task to engage in a preferred activity for preset amount of time. In addition, students are incentivized to not use the class passes by continuing to engage in the academic task and instead exchanging them for a preferred item or activity. Using an experimental single-case withdrawal design with replication through a concurrent multiple-baseline across-participants design, the CPI was shown to reduce disruptive behavior and increase academic engagement in three students who engaged in hypothesized escape-motivated behavior. Results also revealed that the effects of the CPI were maintained at a two-week follow-up probe and consumers found it to be acceptable. The limitations and implications of the findings for future research on effective classroom-based interventions are discussed.