A Comparison of Lecture Versus Role-Playing in the Training of the Use of Positive Reinforcement

Managers of organizations, often in coordination with personnel departments, create training programs for their staff. The emphasis in human service organizations is to train staff to use behavior modification techniques, especially to reinforce appropriate client behavior. Unfortunately, published research evaluating the quality of this training has been almost nonexistent (Kazdin & Moyer, 1976). Two different instructional formats of training were compared in this study: two groups received a lecture on reinforcing appropriate behavior and two groups role-played the act of reinforcing appropriate behavior. Follow-up observations of the staff showed that the performance of the lecture-trained staff was stable or declined after an initial improvement. The performance of staff who role-played, however, continued to improve. Feedback and physical action may be the reasons for the superiority of role-playing over a lecture format.