Evaluation of a Novel Independent Group Contingency in an Alternative School

We evaluated a novel group contingency arrangement designed to address implementation barriers commonly cited by teachers in alternative education. Barriers include implementer effort, disruption caused by delivering feedback to students, students sabotaging the game, and students maximizing disruption when they know the reinforcement criterion. To address these barriers, we decreased implementer effort using the principles of time sampling, omitted feedback for rule violations, arranged an independent group contingency to address sabotage, and did not disclose reinforcement criteria to students. The intervention produced marked reductions in disruption across four alternative middle- and high-school classes.