The Effects of the Family Behavior Support Application (FBSApp) with Virtual, Strategy-Based Coaching on Caregiver and Child Behaviors

We tested the Family Behavior Support application (FBSApp), a mobile app designed to support caregivers in their use of functional assessment-based intervention strategies to address their children’s challenging behaviors at home and support healthy social-emotional development. Two caregiver/child dyads participated in a single-case multiple baseline across behaviors (i.e., strategies) design. We used systematic, ongoing coaching via telehealth to support caregivers’ use of app-recommended intervention strategies in the context of a targeted home routine. Intervention resulted in increases in caregiver’s use of prevent and new response strategies, increases in child use of replacement behaviors, and decreases in child challenging behaviors. Functional relations were not identified due to a lack of change in one (i.e., Teach strategies) of three tiers for Family 1, and lack of sufficient experimental control due to withdrawal during the first tier for Family 2. Though we did not identify functional relations, our study is meaningful given we used a rigorous single case research design and had interesting, idiosyncratic results. These findings underscore the importance of individualized approaches and contribute to the broader discourse on personalized intervention strategies. Future research is needed to continue to examine efficient ways to support families in virtual settings.