Preferred Name
Valencia Pankey Camper
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Date of Graduation
8-14-2026
Semester of Graduation
Summer
Degree Name
Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)
Department
Department of Graduate Psychology
First Advisor
Trevor F. Stokes
Second Advisor
Caitlyn Owens
Third Advisor
Tonya Lambert Delp
Abstract
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is one form of behavioral therapy that is effective in teaching functional skills and decreasing challenging behavior in individuals with ASD. ABA interventions are often designed, developed, and implemented by behavior analysts who have completed graduate training in ABA. Oftentimes, parent training is a necessary component of ABA as it promotes the generalization and maintenance of treatment outcomes across relevant people and settings. While behavior analysts may consider parent training to be important for creating socially significant change, parents may be less motivated to actively engage in parent training for various reasons. Thus, the behavior analyst is tasked with navigating complex interactions and conversations with the parents of their clients. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is one evidence-based intervention that can be used to effectively navigate conversations when a person is resistant or ambivalent about behavior change while also maintaining a therapeutic alliance.
This study utilized a concurrent multiple baseline design across sets of behaviors. The study expanded the ABA research by evaluating how MI could be incorporated into the graduate training of students in an ABA program to support the development of clinical skills consistent with building and maintaining a therapeutic alliance when working with parents. The study examined the effectiveness of a brief MI training, which included components of behavior skills training (BST), to teach MI skills to graduate students. Additionally, the study evaluated the feasibility of incorporating the training within an existing university clinical training model.
