Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS) in Psychology
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair
C. Renee Renda
Abstract
Writing is highly important for college students, and they will need to conform to the formatting of the writing styles used in their classes. One style required of many students is the American Psychological Association (APA). Students often make errors when formatting references using APA Style. Although various instructional strategies have been used to teach these skills, some methods take a long time to achieve minimal increases or are cumbersome to implement in some learning environments. Behavioral skills training (BST) is an empirically supported method for teaching skills that involves providing the learner with written and verbal instructions, modeling, practice opportunities, and feedback until a predetermined mastery criterion is met. This teaching strategy is easily adaptable to most learning environments and individualized based on learner performance. However, no study has examined the use of BST to teach APA Style. Thus, the present study compared the effects of written instructions and BST on APA reference skills using a multiple baseline across behaviors design. Five undergraduate students were recruited as participants. They were asked to complete a demographics survey, a quiz, and reference tasks that assessed their ability to format a reference list item. Next, participants received written instructions that detailed the steps for correctly formatting a reference list item. If participants did not reach the mastery criterion in this condition, we conducted BST until participants could correctly format a reference list item at 90% correct responses or above. Participants completed a post-training and maintenance session approximately 1 week and 4 weeks after the initial session, respectively. Written instructions were effective at teaching most of the formatting steps. During the post-training and maintenance sessions, slight decreases in percentage correct were observed. The results of this study suggest that less intensive methods, not more, are all that is necessary to teach APA referencing skills. We also discuss future areas for research.