The Journal of Primary Prevention, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1992
Eco-Transactional Behavioral Research Leonard A. Jason 1
Over the past few years, developmental and community theorists have begun speculating about and researching transactional and ecological processes. Rather than just focus on individual-unit phenomena, the transactional theorists point to reciprocal effects of different systems such that people are influenced and influence others over long periods of time. Ecological theorists have identified interrelationships between different systems or ecologies. Although behavioral investigators frequently study more attribute-type phenomena, methods invented to capture behavior change could be used to analyze transactional and ecological processes. In this paper, an attempt is made to explain the behavioral methodologies that could be used to help investigators better understand transactions and ecological processes. KEY WORDS: behavioral research; ecological research; transactional research.
In this paper, theories from developmental and ecological psychology will be used to provide a theoretical foundation for suggesting new ways to capture behavioral phenomena. In addition, the behavioral paradigm will be presented as providing a unique means for gaining insights into transactional and relational phenomena, which have proved very difficult to measure by more classical methodologies. Although there are many developmental theories and principles used by community psychologists, few have received the attention of the transactional model. In an influential review article, Sameroff and Chandler (1975) found that infants with pregnancy or perinatal complications had few if any negative long-term effects if they came from high SES, intact families. The same complications often lead to later retardation or 1Leonard Jason, Ph.D., is affiliated with De Paul University, Chicago, IL. A d d r e s s correspondence and reprint requests to: Department of Psychology, De Paul University, 2219 N. Kenmore Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614. 37 © 1992Human Sciences Press, Inc.
38
Jason
personality problems if the parents came from low SES and unstable environments. These findings point to inadequacies in the main effect model (i.e., the child's constitution or environment exert independent influences) and the interactional model (i.e., the combination of the environment and the constitution are considered, but this model does not include the possibility that the characteristics of each might change over time). With a transactional model, reciprocal changes are posited, so for example, as a parent begins to change a child, changes in the child begin to bring about changes in the parent. The transactional model focuses on breakdowns in continuous organism-environment transactions over time, which prevent children from organizing their worlds adaptively. A transactional approach points us toward focusing not just on children or parents, but on the transactions of both over time (Sameroff, 1977). Sameroff (1987) has recently proposed three preventive strategies that incorporate transactional concepts: remediation, redefinition, and reeducation. Remediation involves changing the child to adhere to the normative codes of parents. Redefinition consists of helping parents use existing regulatory systems to guide the child toward normative developmental outcomes (e.g., identifying for parents the possibilities of normal childrearing within what appears to be deviant situations). Finally, reeducation entails teaching the cultural code that regulates a child's development from birth to maturity (e.g., teaching parents how to raise their children). Although societallevel influences can be added to family regulatory systems, their influences are not as precisely indicated. It is curious that in these types of interventions, efforts are explicitly targeted at either the child or the parent, and not the child and parent. Lorion (1990) has been one of the most ardent supporters of this transactional approach, primarily because of its utility in monitoring processes related to change (a central goal of community psychology). Lorion has adopted this model and applied it most conscientious!y to preventive interventions. Lorion defines risk, using this transactional model, as the simultaneous presence and reciprocal influence of individual and environmental characteristics, which if unaltered can lead to dysfunction. Another competing paradigm, which has captured the attention of many community theorists, is the ecological model (Mann, 1978). Lewin's (1951) seminal work emphasized the interdependence of the person and the environment in determining behavior, and Barker (1968) continued this work with his emphasis on the nonpsychological environment (i.e., behavior settings which have a clear time and space, have their own internal structure, and are independent of any particular behavior). Moos (1984) and Sarason, Carroll, Maton, Cohen, and Lorentz (1977) have continued to elaborate upon the ecological approach. Kelly and his colleagues,
Eco-Transactional Behavioral Research
39
particularly Trickett, have been some of the leading theorists in this fascinating line of research (Kelly, 1968, 1969, 1975, 1977, 1985, 1987; Kelly, Snowden, & Munoz, 1977; Kelly, Munoz, & Snowden, 1979; Trickett, Kelly, & Vincent, 1985). Kelly's goal has been to develop propositions of how people become effective and adaptive in varied social environments. The ecological paradigm is a guiding framework for understanding behavior in interaction with its social and cultural contexts. In brief, Kelly has proposed four ecological principles that can serve as a conceptual framework for examining settings and behavior; interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession. For those not familiar with these principles, the idea might at first appear somewhat complicated. Examples of each of the principles will be provided in a later section; but first, the principles will be briefly defined. Interdependence indicates that any change in a component of an ecosystem can affect changes in relationships between other components in the system as well. The principle of cycling of resources provides us a guide for understanding how ecosystems create and use new resources. This allows us to determine how resources can be better used in a setting and how additional resources can be generated. Adaptation refers to the principle that environments shape adaptation. A behavior adaptive in one setting may not be adaptive in others. This principle points us toward trying to assess who participates in defining the adaptive roles, and to generate normative acceptance and support for a wide range of adaptive behaviors. Finally, the principle of succession suggests that communities are in a constant process of change, and that over time, there are changing demands for adaptive capacities. While these principles focus on different aspects of the social context and behavior, they also overlap and complement each other (Trickett & Mitchell, in press). Kingry-Westergaard and Kelly (1990) have recently suggested that a fundamental principle of an ecological approach involves using multiple methods to understand complex qualities of relationships and systems. One of these methods for helping to understand what we claim to know is the collaborative relationship between the researcher and the participants. This means that concepts and hypotheses are developed and tested by both the researcher and the participants. In a sense, the ecological endeavor is a discovery proces where the different parties share the different constructions of their contexts, learn of those events and processes that help define their understanding of the contexts, and work together to define the research activity. We have now provided a limited description of the transactional and ecological models, and although it might not be apparent, at different levels of analysis there are considerable similarities between these alternative
40
Jason
perspectives. For example, the principle of interdependence examines the relationship between one component of an ecosystem and another, whereas in a transactional analysis, the influence between one component of a dyadic relationship and another is investigated. The principle of cycling of resources points out how resources can be used and can become available, but transactional processes can be thought of as one of the more interpersonal resources within a setting. The principle of adaptation suggests that we might generate normative acceptance for a wide range of adaptive behaviors, just as the transactional redefinition strategy suggests that we identify for parents the possibilities for normal childrearing within what appears to be a deviant situation. Finally, the principle of succession looks at changes in adaptational capacities over time, just as a transactional approach adopts a long term perspective and expects different adaptational capacities among the ever-changing person-organism transactions. Without doubt, there are differences in these models, but the similarities are profound, particularly if one considers the ecological model as applying to the systems level, whereas the transactional model gains its robustness from examining dyadic'person-environment relationships. The third model to be introduced is the behavioral perspective. Elsewhere (Bogat & Jason, in press), it has been argued that the behavioral philosophical approach has been dominated by an extrapectionistic framework, one which has been powerful in producing behavioral changes, but has often not been comprehensive in describing more contextual issues (e.g., entry issues, how the problem is selected, larger system issues influencing the selected problem). The power of the behavioral approach is that it translates problems into schemas where solutions are possible, even if they are of the "small win" category. The behavioral perspective, at its broadest, could accommodate many of the features of the transactional ecological models, although it rarely does. To be more specific, although most traditional behavioral investigators analyze stimulus and consequence influences on behavior, these influences are often simplified and narrow. However, it is possible to understand behavior as influenced by multiple contingencies and setting features (Patterson, 1982). For example, Herrnstein's hyperbola asserts that responding is governed by contingent reinforcement that is evaluated relative to all reinforcement provided by an environment (McDowell, 1982). Contingent reinforcement might produce high or low response rates depending on concurrently available sources of reinforcement. Some setting events are composed of environmental events plus a person's response to them (stimulus-response interactions, which simply because they have occurred will affect other stimulus-response relationships; Wahler & Fox, 1981).
Eco-Transactional Behavioral Research
41
Willems (1974) has suggested that behaviorists need to examine second- and third-order consequences of interventions in order to better understand system-like principles that permeate behavior and the environment. Other behaviorists have also advocated adopting an ecological or systems perspective into behavioral interventions (Fawcett, Matthews, & Fletcher, 1980; Krasner, 1980; Rogers-Warren & Warren, 1977; Winett, 1985). The most sophisticated writings in the behavioral field on these ecological variables have come from Evans and colleagues (Evans, Meyer, Kurkjian, & Kishi, 1988). They state that positive generalization effects can happen when a snowballing effect occurs, where change produces ripple effects on interactions with others. In fact, a goal of interventions might be for these ripple effects to occur, so that natural environmental contingencies can take over to sustain the behavioral changes (Stokes & Baer, 1977). This literature does hint at a transactional approach, but most of the ecological principles are not explicitly mentioned. A more differentiated approach would borrow concepts from transactional and ecological psychology, as they were outlined above. A brief illustration might show some of the heuristic advantages in using these concepts. Changes in a child's repertoire could bring about changes in a parent's interactions with the child, which could lead to further behavioral changes in the child; thus illustrating transactional and interdependence principles. Different contingencies in different settings could elicit different types or degrees of child competencies (adaptation principle). A careful analysis of a setting's contingencies could identify available resources (cycling of resources). Finally, as organisms gain repertoires over time, and as contingencies also change over time, different behaviors will be reinforced (principle of succession). The point is that the behavioral, transactional, and ecological models can be used to understand a wide assortment of phenomena, with the behavioral model being perhaps the most concrete. As a consequence, in practice, the behavioral model is the most likely to ignore transactional and ecological principles, although the possibilities for including rich ideas within their paradigms do exist. In addition, the more conceptual transactional and ecological theories could be enriched by a grounding in behavioral data, which could provide a useful substantive, empirical base for these interesting but underresearched theoretical approaches. The area that has created the most difficulties in beginning a dialogue between adherents of the ecological and behavioral approaches involves basic assumptions of those models. As previously stated, a core value in the ecological paradigm involves collaboration between researchers and participants, and mutual decisions concerning the selection of the intervention
Jason
42
target and the process of the intervention. Behavioral research has generally not included these characteristics, nor have they been stated as explicit values. Behavioral research has often striven for excessive investigator control of the phenomena in order to increase the rigor of the study. It is possible, however, for behavioral investigators to use their methodology in a way that allows participants to become involved in the process as true partners. Although some may feel that this approach would violate critical assumptions of gathering neutral, objective, scientific observations, in fact as long as the criteria of the interest are well defined (which can be accomplished in a collaborative way), the behavioral approach can be used as a tool whereby researchers and citizens jointly plan and implement community interventions. In order to better see how these different theoretical models can complement each other, several behavioral studies will be presented, and with each, the relationship or lack thereof to transactional and ecological variables will be elaborated. First, we will examine studies that have some relevance to a transactional model. It will be argued that many behavioral studies incorporate transactional properties; however, because of a lack of familiarity among behaviorists with this model, the transactional principles are not noticed or assessed, or are deliberately manipulated. Illustrations will come from research that I have conducted over the years.
TRANSACTIONAL RESEARCH In the first behavioral study, Douglas and Jason (1986) documented the process of helping to create a babysitting exchange program. The details of the procedures used to create this source of support for parents are presented elsewhere. Significantly, hours of use of this babysitting co-op gradually increased over time (see Fig. 1). When the investigators ceased their involvement in this network, at a two and a half month follow-up, co-op use by the parents continued to increase or at least stayed at a high level (in Fig. 1, the formal intervention ended on week 27 and follow-up data were collected on week 37). From a traditional behavioral point of view, documenting the increases was sufficient; however, the continuation of increases suggests that transactional processes were occurring. That is, parents participated, received some gratification, and their levels of participation increased. The processes which stimulated these increases are unclear. In this case, a transactional approach that helped investigators collect data on children's satisfaction with the co-op, exchanges occurring among the members of other non-co-op resources, and possible changes in parental skills and competencies, would have enriched this behavioral study by
43
Eco-Transactionai Behavioral Research
i
Q
34 32 3O 28 26 24 22
8 s0 II
16 14 12
6 4 2
0. 1 2 3 4 5 6"7 ! 9 10 I! 12 13 14 1.516 17 1019 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 37 WEEKS
Fig. 1. Total co-op use over time. Reprinted with permission, from the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Volume 56, pages 103-108. Copyright 1986 by the American Orthopsychiatric Association, Inc.
helping understand some of the key dynamics accounting for incremental increases in co-op use. A transactional analysis might have helped behavioral investigators better understand changes occurring in the parents as a function of being in the program, as well as changes in the program as a result of being influenced by the participants. This example does not specify basic requirements for a transactional study, and some might argue that there is no need to even posit transactional processes to explain these continued increases. At best, this study provides an example of how a transactional lens might have allowed the investigators to more fully document some of the processes that might have had transactional components within them. Another behavioral study explored stimulus and consequence control techniques for reducing passive smoke in a cafeteria (Jason & Liotta, 1982). Polite request to not smoke and no-smoking signs were effective in decreasing smoking in a non-smoking section (see Fig. 2; the phase Sign plus Verbal Prompting was the most effective strategy in reducing smoking). At
44
Jason
/
.,.,., +,...+ p,+"~++
Eco-Transactional Behavioral Research Leonard A. Jason 1
Over the past few years, developmental and community theorists have begun speculating about and researching transactional and ecological processes. Rather than just focus on individual-unit phenomena, the transactional theorists point to reciprocal effects of different systems such that people are influenced and influence others over long periods of time. Ecological theorists have identified interrelationships between different systems or ecologies. Although behavioral investigators frequently study more attribute-type phenomena, methods invented to capture behavior change could be used to analyze transactional and ecological processes. In this paper, an attempt is made to explain the behavioral methodologies that could be used to help investigators better understand transactions and ecological processes. KEY WORDS: behavioral research; ecological research; transactional research.
In this paper, theories from developmental and ecological psychology will be used to provide a theoretical foundation for suggesting new ways to capture behavioral phenomena. In addition, the behavioral paradigm will be presented as providing a unique means for gaining insights into transactional and relational phenomena, which have proved very difficult to measure by more classical methodologies. Although there are many developmental theories and principles used by community psychologists, few have received the attention of the transactional model. In an influential review article, Sameroff and Chandler (1975) found that infants with pregnancy or perinatal complications had few if any negative long-term effects if they came from high SES, intact families. The same complications often lead to later retardation or 1Leonard Jason, Ph.D., is affiliated with De Paul University, Chicago, IL. A d d r e s s correspondence and reprint requests to: Department of Psychology, De Paul University, 2219 N. Kenmore Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614. 37 © 1992Human Sciences Press, Inc.
38
Jason
personality problems if the parents came from low SES and unstable environments. These findings point to inadequacies in the main effect model (i.e., the child's constitution or environment exert independent influences) and the interactional model (i.e., the combination of the environment and the constitution are considered, but this model does not include the possibility that the characteristics of each might change over time). With a transactional model, reciprocal changes are posited, so for example, as a parent begins to change a child, changes in the child begin to bring about changes in the parent. The transactional model focuses on breakdowns in continuous organism-environment transactions over time, which prevent children from organizing their worlds adaptively. A transactional approach points us toward focusing not just on children or parents, but on the transactions of both over time (Sameroff, 1977). Sameroff (1987) has recently proposed three preventive strategies that incorporate transactional concepts: remediation, redefinition, and reeducation. Remediation involves changing the child to adhere to the normative codes of parents. Redefinition consists of helping parents use existing regulatory systems to guide the child toward normative developmental outcomes (e.g., identifying for parents the possibilities of normal childrearing within what appears to be deviant situations). Finally, reeducation entails teaching the cultural code that regulates a child's development from birth to maturity (e.g., teaching parents how to raise their children). Although societallevel influences can be added to family regulatory systems, their influences are not as precisely indicated. It is curious that in these types of interventions, efforts are explicitly targeted at either the child or the parent, and not the child and parent. Lorion (1990) has been one of the most ardent supporters of this transactional approach, primarily because of its utility in monitoring processes related to change (a central goal of community psychology). Lorion has adopted this model and applied it most conscientious!y to preventive interventions. Lorion defines risk, using this transactional model, as the simultaneous presence and reciprocal influence of individual and environmental characteristics, which if unaltered can lead to dysfunction. Another competing paradigm, which has captured the attention of many community theorists, is the ecological model (Mann, 1978). Lewin's (1951) seminal work emphasized the interdependence of the person and the environment in determining behavior, and Barker (1968) continued this work with his emphasis on the nonpsychological environment (i.e., behavior settings which have a clear time and space, have their own internal structure, and are independent of any particular behavior). Moos (1984) and Sarason, Carroll, Maton, Cohen, and Lorentz (1977) have continued to elaborate upon the ecological approach. Kelly and his colleagues,
Eco-Transactional Behavioral Research
39
particularly Trickett, have been some of the leading theorists in this fascinating line of research (Kelly, 1968, 1969, 1975, 1977, 1985, 1987; Kelly, Snowden, & Munoz, 1977; Kelly, Munoz, & Snowden, 1979; Trickett, Kelly, & Vincent, 1985). Kelly's goal has been to develop propositions of how people become effective and adaptive in varied social environments. The ecological paradigm is a guiding framework for understanding behavior in interaction with its social and cultural contexts. In brief, Kelly has proposed four ecological principles that can serve as a conceptual framework for examining settings and behavior; interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession. For those not familiar with these principles, the idea might at first appear somewhat complicated. Examples of each of the principles will be provided in a later section; but first, the principles will be briefly defined. Interdependence indicates that any change in a component of an ecosystem can affect changes in relationships between other components in the system as well. The principle of cycling of resources provides us a guide for understanding how ecosystems create and use new resources. This allows us to determine how resources can be better used in a setting and how additional resources can be generated. Adaptation refers to the principle that environments shape adaptation. A behavior adaptive in one setting may not be adaptive in others. This principle points us toward trying to assess who participates in defining the adaptive roles, and to generate normative acceptance and support for a wide range of adaptive behaviors. Finally, the principle of succession suggests that communities are in a constant process of change, and that over time, there are changing demands for adaptive capacities. While these principles focus on different aspects of the social context and behavior, they also overlap and complement each other (Trickett & Mitchell, in press). Kingry-Westergaard and Kelly (1990) have recently suggested that a fundamental principle of an ecological approach involves using multiple methods to understand complex qualities of relationships and systems. One of these methods for helping to understand what we claim to know is the collaborative relationship between the researcher and the participants. This means that concepts and hypotheses are developed and tested by both the researcher and the participants. In a sense, the ecological endeavor is a discovery proces where the different parties share the different constructions of their contexts, learn of those events and processes that help define their understanding of the contexts, and work together to define the research activity. We have now provided a limited description of the transactional and ecological models, and although it might not be apparent, at different levels of analysis there are considerable similarities between these alternative
40
Jason
perspectives. For example, the principle of interdependence examines the relationship between one component of an ecosystem and another, whereas in a transactional analysis, the influence between one component of a dyadic relationship and another is investigated. The principle of cycling of resources points out how resources can be used and can become available, but transactional processes can be thought of as one of the more interpersonal resources within a setting. The principle of adaptation suggests that we might generate normative acceptance for a wide range of adaptive behaviors, just as the transactional redefinition strategy suggests that we identify for parents the possibilities for normal childrearing within what appears to be a deviant situation. Finally, the principle of succession looks at changes in adaptational capacities over time, just as a transactional approach adopts a long term perspective and expects different adaptational capacities among the ever-changing person-organism transactions. Without doubt, there are differences in these models, but the similarities are profound, particularly if one considers the ecological model as applying to the systems level, whereas the transactional model gains its robustness from examining dyadic'person-environment relationships. The third model to be introduced is the behavioral perspective. Elsewhere (Bogat & Jason, in press), it has been argued that the behavioral philosophical approach has been dominated by an extrapectionistic framework, one which has been powerful in producing behavioral changes, but has often not been comprehensive in describing more contextual issues (e.g., entry issues, how the problem is selected, larger system issues influencing the selected problem). The power of the behavioral approach is that it translates problems into schemas where solutions are possible, even if they are of the "small win" category. The behavioral perspective, at its broadest, could accommodate many of the features of the transactional ecological models, although it rarely does. To be more specific, although most traditional behavioral investigators analyze stimulus and consequence influences on behavior, these influences are often simplified and narrow. However, it is possible to understand behavior as influenced by multiple contingencies and setting features (Patterson, 1982). For example, Herrnstein's hyperbola asserts that responding is governed by contingent reinforcement that is evaluated relative to all reinforcement provided by an environment (McDowell, 1982). Contingent reinforcement might produce high or low response rates depending on concurrently available sources of reinforcement. Some setting events are composed of environmental events plus a person's response to them (stimulus-response interactions, which simply because they have occurred will affect other stimulus-response relationships; Wahler & Fox, 1981).
Eco-Transactional Behavioral Research
41
Willems (1974) has suggested that behaviorists need to examine second- and third-order consequences of interventions in order to better understand system-like principles that permeate behavior and the environment. Other behaviorists have also advocated adopting an ecological or systems perspective into behavioral interventions (Fawcett, Matthews, & Fletcher, 1980; Krasner, 1980; Rogers-Warren & Warren, 1977; Winett, 1985). The most sophisticated writings in the behavioral field on these ecological variables have come from Evans and colleagues (Evans, Meyer, Kurkjian, & Kishi, 1988). They state that positive generalization effects can happen when a snowballing effect occurs, where change produces ripple effects on interactions with others. In fact, a goal of interventions might be for these ripple effects to occur, so that natural environmental contingencies can take over to sustain the behavioral changes (Stokes & Baer, 1977). This literature does hint at a transactional approach, but most of the ecological principles are not explicitly mentioned. A more differentiated approach would borrow concepts from transactional and ecological psychology, as they were outlined above. A brief illustration might show some of the heuristic advantages in using these concepts. Changes in a child's repertoire could bring about changes in a parent's interactions with the child, which could lead to further behavioral changes in the child; thus illustrating transactional and interdependence principles. Different contingencies in different settings could elicit different types or degrees of child competencies (adaptation principle). A careful analysis of a setting's contingencies could identify available resources (cycling of resources). Finally, as organisms gain repertoires over time, and as contingencies also change over time, different behaviors will be reinforced (principle of succession). The point is that the behavioral, transactional, and ecological models can be used to understand a wide assortment of phenomena, with the behavioral model being perhaps the most concrete. As a consequence, in practice, the behavioral model is the most likely to ignore transactional and ecological principles, although the possibilities for including rich ideas within their paradigms do exist. In addition, the more conceptual transactional and ecological theories could be enriched by a grounding in behavioral data, which could provide a useful substantive, empirical base for these interesting but underresearched theoretical approaches. The area that has created the most difficulties in beginning a dialogue between adherents of the ecological and behavioral approaches involves basic assumptions of those models. As previously stated, a core value in the ecological paradigm involves collaboration between researchers and participants, and mutual decisions concerning the selection of the intervention
Jason
42
target and the process of the intervention. Behavioral research has generally not included these characteristics, nor have they been stated as explicit values. Behavioral research has often striven for excessive investigator control of the phenomena in order to increase the rigor of the study. It is possible, however, for behavioral investigators to use their methodology in a way that allows participants to become involved in the process as true partners. Although some may feel that this approach would violate critical assumptions of gathering neutral, objective, scientific observations, in fact as long as the criteria of the interest are well defined (which can be accomplished in a collaborative way), the behavioral approach can be used as a tool whereby researchers and citizens jointly plan and implement community interventions. In order to better see how these different theoretical models can complement each other, several behavioral studies will be presented, and with each, the relationship or lack thereof to transactional and ecological variables will be elaborated. First, we will examine studies that have some relevance to a transactional model. It will be argued that many behavioral studies incorporate transactional properties; however, because of a lack of familiarity among behaviorists with this model, the transactional principles are not noticed or assessed, or are deliberately manipulated. Illustrations will come from research that I have conducted over the years.
TRANSACTIONAL RESEARCH In the first behavioral study, Douglas and Jason (1986) documented the process of helping to create a babysitting exchange program. The details of the procedures used to create this source of support for parents are presented elsewhere. Significantly, hours of use of this babysitting co-op gradually increased over time (see Fig. 1). When the investigators ceased their involvement in this network, at a two and a half month follow-up, co-op use by the parents continued to increase or at least stayed at a high level (in Fig. 1, the formal intervention ended on week 27 and follow-up data were collected on week 37). From a traditional behavioral point of view, documenting the increases was sufficient; however, the continuation of increases suggests that transactional processes were occurring. That is, parents participated, received some gratification, and their levels of participation increased. The processes which stimulated these increases are unclear. In this case, a transactional approach that helped investigators collect data on children's satisfaction with the co-op, exchanges occurring among the members of other non-co-op resources, and possible changes in parental skills and competencies, would have enriched this behavioral study by
43
Eco-Transactionai Behavioral Research
i
Q
34 32 3O 28 26 24 22
8 s0 II
16 14 12
6 4 2
0. 1 2 3 4 5 6"7 ! 9 10 I! 12 13 14 1.516 17 1019 20 21 22 23 24 25 2627 37 WEEKS
Fig. 1. Total co-op use over time. Reprinted with permission, from the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Volume 56, pages 103-108. Copyright 1986 by the American Orthopsychiatric Association, Inc.
helping understand some of the key dynamics accounting for incremental increases in co-op use. A transactional analysis might have helped behavioral investigators better understand changes occurring in the parents as a function of being in the program, as well as changes in the program as a result of being influenced by the participants. This example does not specify basic requirements for a transactional study, and some might argue that there is no need to even posit transactional processes to explain these continued increases. At best, this study provides an example of how a transactional lens might have allowed the investigators to more fully document some of the processes that might have had transactional components within them. Another behavioral study explored stimulus and consequence control techniques for reducing passive smoke in a cafeteria (Jason & Liotta, 1982). Polite request to not smoke and no-smoking signs were effective in decreasing smoking in a non-smoking section (see Fig. 2; the phase Sign plus Verbal Prompting was the most effective strategy in reducing smoking). At
44
Jason
/
.,.,., +,...+ p,+"~++
