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In the article “Evaluation of behavioral skills training to prevent gun play in children” (Miltenberger et al., 2004) was described methodology and results of study about relation of children’s safety skills and (BST) and\with in situ training. The hypothesis of the study was the assumption about the presence of efficiency between gun safety behavior and behavioral skills training. Furthermore, researchers tried to find whether BST is more effective for 6- and 7-year-olds than for the 4- and 5-year-olds or not. Dependent variables were the behavior with regard to gun, the presence of BST and in situ training. Independent variables were children’s personal characteristics.
For the surveillance were selected special respondents through summer day-care programs: children age 6-7 years (4 boys and 2 girls). Observations were made on the basis of the children’s homes or schools. All observations were recorded. Moreover, the purity of observation was provided by triangulation of data acquisition from different observers.
The experiment was conducted on three levels. At baseline were examined basic level of children`s gun safety. There was a gun in the room, and the children were assessed according to the selected action strategy towards this gun. In the next stage behavioral skills training was carried out with each child during two sessions. After that, with those who did not get 3 points in the new observation, was conducted a training session.
The study found that in comparison with the previous research of Himle, Miltenberger, Flessner, and Gatheridge (2004), the correlation indicators of gun safety and trainings sessions have not changed. So it is not possible to say, that BST was more effective for 6- and 7-year-olds than it was for the 4- and 5-year-olds. However, there is also no opportunity to talk about sufficient representativeness of the study. Furthermore, since it was found that the parameter of gun safety skills depends on the personal characteristics of a child. Moreover, there are three pointed limitations, which were connected with the individual cases of the experiment. The researchers plan to continue to study the effectiveness of safety skills training through different contexts.
References
Miltenberger, R., Flessner, C., Gatheridge, B., Johnson, B., Satterlund, M., & Egemo, K. (2004). Evaluation of behavioral skills training to prevent gun play in children. J Appl Behav Anal, 37(4), 513-516. http://dx.doi.org/10.1901/jaba.2004.37-513
