Considering the Intrusiveness of Interventions

Determining the most appropriate intervention to address student problem behavior may be a difficult dilemma encountered by school psychologists during consultation activities with special education teachers. IDEA (1997) promotes the least restrictive environment and the least intrusive interventions that can be effective. The intrusiveness of assessment and interventions applied to a problem behavior should involve a positive correlation with the severity of problem behavior with more severe problems warranting more intrusive interventions. This matching of more intrusive interventions to more severe problem behaviors may not be representative of actual practice in education. This type of relationship also infers that more intrusive interventions warrant more extensive assessment procedures although conceptually, more extensive assessments should lead to less intrusive interventions. The ethical issues associated with the intrusiveness of assessment and intervention procedures are discussed within the context of ensuring the least intrusive intervention. Some issues of intrusive interventions to be discussed are the nature and occurrence of the problem behavior, previous interventions attempted, justification of proposed treatments, implementation of proposed treatments, and methods of monitoring and assessing intrusive interventions.