Participation of Students With IDD in Social Validity Assessment of Function-Based Interventions in School Settings: A Prevalence Review

Abstract

Although the effectiveness of function-based interventions in meeting the behavioral support needs of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities has been explored extensively, the social validity of function-based interventions from the perspective of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities has received less attention in the research literature. Therefore, our purpose was to conduct a systematic literature review of single-case function-based intervention research studies conducted in PK–12 U.S. school settings between 2006 and 2022 to understand the prevalence of the participation of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in social validity assessments. We identified 142 reports that met our inclusion criteria. Of those, only 11 included social validity assessments involving students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, suggesting a critical need to incorporate student voice in function-based intervention and explore meaningful social validity assessment practices for this student population.