The results of a survey administered to job coaches and supervisors of supported employment job coaches suggested that current definitions of “aversiveness” are too ambiguous to enable job coaches to effectively provide behavioral interventions for persons with disabilities in the community. That is, confusion exists over what constitutes an aversive intervention versus a non-aversive intervention. Indeed, when asked to rate 20 vignettes describing actual interventions used in the community, respondents' ratings were distributed across the Likert scale from non-aversive to severely aversive on 17 of the vignettes for both groups.
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