Does rational persuasion influence potential consultees?

DOES RATIONAL PERSUASION INFLUENCE POTENTIAL CONSULTEES?

STEPHEN D. TRUSCOTT, ROBERT D. RICHARDSON, CELINA COHEN, ALICIA FRANK, AND DEANNA PALMERI

The University at Buffalo, SUNY

Success in collaborative school-based consultation depends on whether teachers implement inter-ventions suggested by consultants. In business literature, Rational Persuasion (RP) has beenidentified as one potentially effective way to influence consultee perceptions about proposedinterventions. RP includes intervention information, why it is important to decide to use theintervention, and potential objections to the intervention with arguments against those objec-tions. The influence of these RP elements on potential school-based consultees has not beenstudied. This preliminary analog study investigated whether presenting RP importance and objec-tions for behavioral interventions influenced teachers’ ratings of acceptability, effectiveness, andcommitment-to-implement. Participants included 71 teachers enrolled in graduate educationcourses. The within-subject design included three video vignettes of each of three conditions forthree different behavioral interventions (total of nine possible videos, three presented to eachgroup). Results suggest that the influence of RP on acceptability, perceived effectiveness, andcommitment-to-implement ratings was inconsistent. Implications for research and practice arediscussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Providing academic and behavioral consultation services to teachers is thought to be anincreasingly important role for school psychologists (e.g., Reschly & Ysseldyke, 2002; Sheridan& Gutkin, 2000). The importance of the consultation role is likely to increase substantially ifrecent calls for restructuring special education classification procedures (e.g., eliminate IQ testingfor LD: President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education, 2002) are supported bylegislation. However, commitment from teachers to implement interventions is central to the suc-cess of consultation (e.g., Gutkin & Conoley, 1990; Margolis & McGettigan, 1988; Meyers, 1989).Many factors may play a role in influencing teachers’ acceptance and implementation of interven-tion recommendations including the match between the teacher’s theoretical orientation and theproposed intervention, the time required to implement the intervention, and the way the interven-tion is presented (e.g., Eckert & Hintze, 2000; Elliott, 1988). An additional consideration is thatschool-based consultation is a severely time-limited endeavor (Erchul & Martens, 1997). There-fore, it is important to find ways to influence teachers that are as efficient as possible.

Rational persuasion (Eagly & Chaiken, 1984), the “use of arguments and factual evidence topersuade that a proposal or request is viable and likely to result in the attainment of task objec-tives” (Yukl & Tracy, 1992, p. 527), has been identified as a powerful way to influence people.Similarly, Erchul and Raven (1997) indicated that providing information about the research-derived support for a proposed intervention and examples of effective local implementation arepotentially powerful ways to influence consultees. Their term for this is “informational power,”and they reported that it may have numerous advantages over other modes of social influence. Forexample, it is thought to be more permanent, require less surveillance, have fewer side effects, andbe more generalizable to other situations than other influence strategies. One disadvantage ofinformational power is that it may require more time for explanation than other influence strat-egies. Rational persuasion (RP) includes the elements of informational power with two additional

Robert D. Richardson is now at Salt Lake City School District, UT. Alicia Frank is now at Fletcher Allen Health Care,Burlington, VT.

The authors thank the professors and students at the state college for allowing us to conduct this research in theirclasses. We also thank Matthew Mirenberg for helping with the data collection and Susan Gerber for assistance with theanalysis.

Correspondence to: Stephen D. Truscott, Department of Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology, The Uni-versity at Buffalo, SUNY; Buffalo, NY 14260. E-mail: [email protected]

Psychology in the Schools, Vol. 40(6), 2003 © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/pits.10132

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components. The first component is an explanation about why it is important to address the pre-senting problem (Yukl, Kim, & Chavez, 1999). The second is an explication of possible objectionsthat the consultee might have to the proposed intervention, coupled with responses about whythose objections do not rule out the proposed intervention (O’Keefe & Medway, 1997). In thebusiness literature, the explication of objections are part of the presentation of the “feasibility” ofthe proposed intervention or action (Yukl, Kim, & Falbe, 1996) Adding these RP elements (dis-cussing the importance of the intervention and addressing possible objections) to school-basedconsultation explanations that feature implementation of informational power (i.e., research sup-port and local efficacy) has not yet been explored empirically.

Recent research in business management indicates that rational persuasion can be a highlyeffective means of changing attitudes and increasing commitment to a task (Yukl & Tracey, 1992;Yukl et al., 1996; Yukl et al., 1999). For example, in an analog role-play study with 364 under-graduate and graduate business majors Yukl et al. (1999) found that presenting a strong rationaleabout the importance of making a substantive change in a production schedule, and informationabout the feasibility of that change despite the problems it caused, resulted in greater agreementwith the proposed change and higher hypothetical commitment to carry out the change. Similarly,in a study of recalled incidents from 195 MBA students, Yukl et al. (1996) found that rationalpersuasion that included explanations of the importance and feasibility of proposed changes ordecisions resulted in high commitment to the proposals. Overall, Yukl and colleagues (1992, 1996,1999) have consistently found that strong rational persuasion, which involves a clear and detailedexplanation for the request or proposed change (including importance and feasibility), is moreinfluential than weak rational persuasion, which involves only a brief explanation of reasons for arequest or proposal. It is important to note, however, that the Yukl and colleagues’ studies have allinvolved RP investigations with analog or recalled methods. This may limit the generalizability ofthe studies because the relationships between analog results and actual behavior are unclear.

Some empirical studies in the school psychology literature indicate that certain elements ofrational persuasion may be effective at increasing treatment acceptability. Clark & Elliot (1988)and Von Brock & Elliott (1987) found that providing teachers with treatment strength and efficacyinformation positively impacted treatment acceptability ratings. Education regarding behavioralinterventions has also been found to increase acceptability ratings of teachers (Skinner & Hales,1992). Most research on these and other specific techniques to increase treatment acceptability hasbeen limited to analog studies (Nastasi & Truscott, 2000). Further, despite several conceptualpresentations about the potential utility of influence procedures in school-based consultation (e.g.,Erchul & Raven, 1997; O’Keefe & Medway, 1997), there are no empirical studies that support theuse of these techniques in schools. This presents a problem for implementation of such techniquesbecause in addition to the theoretical potential for positive influence, there is at least the theoret-ical possibility that influence techniques might backfire (Erchul & Raven, 1997; Yukl & Tracey,1992) and actually make it less likely that consultees will implement consultant recommendations.The deliberate use of some social influence techniques is problematic because controlling tacticsseem contrary to collaborative consultation paradigms (e.g., Meyers, 1989) and may be perceivedas manipulative even in models that are not described as collaborative (e.g., Erchul & Martens,1997). Providing intervention information using techniques such as RP may be less objectionable,but there is little consultation-based data available that can guide practitioners in deciding whetheror not to use these techniques. Consequently, there is a need to investigate influence methods todetermine whether they are, in fact, potentially useful in school-based consultation.

The purpose of the current study was to provide an initial, empirically based exploration ofthe use of rational persuasion in analog consultation cases. Specifically, we explored how timespent discussing elements of rational persuasion (specifically, RP Importance and RP Objections)

628 Truscott et al.

coupled with information about the effectiveness of proposed interventions influenced teachers’ratings of the acceptability, potential effectiveness, and their potential commitment to implementthose interventions. The research was guided by the following questions: (a) does explicatingpotential objections to an intervention and refuting those objections change teachers’ ratings of theacceptability, potential effectiveness, and their potential commitment-to-implement an interven-tion? (b) Does adding a description about the importance of intervening in the case to a descriptionof potential objections to an intervention and refuting those objections change teachers’ ratings ofthe acceptability, potential effectiveness, and their potential commitment-to-implement anintervention?

Method

Research Design

Because Rational Persuasion techniques are new to the school-based consultation literature,untested in authentic situations, and previous authors have suggested that some influence tech-niques can “backfire” (Erchul & Raven, 1997), we conducted this initial study using analog researchmethods. Analog designs are preferable in situations where initial research on potentially complextopics is being conducted, there is some potential for harm to occur, and there is a need for greaterexperimental control to determine the effect of specific variables (Gelso & Fassinger, 1990).

The decision to use an analog design, however, presented a potential problem with ecologicalvalidity. The link between research participants’ ratings of analog consultation cases and behaviorin authentic settings is not clear. This is especially true for intervention acceptability ratings. Thereis reason to suspect that initial acceptability ratings may not predict directly eventual interventionimplementation by teachers (Noell & Witt, 1996), and there is evidence that acceptability proba-bly changes over the course of a consultation case (Truscott, Cosgrove, Meyers, & Eidle-Barkman, 2000). However, there is also evidence that there is some connection, albeit indirect,between acceptability ratings and implementation (McDougal, Clonan, & Martens, 2000), and theconstruct is an accepted consultation research tool (Eckert & Hintze, 2000). Despite the limita-tions, the acceptability construct provides consultation researchers with one way to assess theimpact that specific consultation strategies may have on consultees.

Given the potential problems with analog research, the researchers chose to conduct thisstudy using a within-subjects design with participants who were actually teachers. Using actualteachers provided an advantage over much previous research that used acceptability ratings fromsamples such as undergraduate students and student teachers. The participants in the current studywere authentic and valid potential consultees who had experience with children (see Table 1). Thewithin-subjects design is less common in this type of analog research, but has recently beenidentified as preferable (Eckert & Shapiro, 1999) because it provides less sampling error and morestatistical power than between-subjects designs. It may also be more representative of ecologicallyvalid behavior (i.e., what actually occurs in real life; Greenwald, 1976).

Finally, we incorporated a stimulus situation that allowed us to control the variation in thewithin-subjects stimuli while at the same time representing something that approached an authen-tic consultation case. Consequently, we employed a digitized video presentation of a consultationsession. Digitizing the video allowed us to edit nine video presentations (three interventions withthree conditions each, described below) so that they were exactly the same in most respects butdifferent in the experimental conditions.

In brief, the research involved a within-subjects design that presented analog video consul-tation scenarios to four groups of teachers (n � 71) over the course of 3 weeks and analyzed the

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participants’ ratings of the intervention acceptability, effectiveness, and hypothesized commitment-to-implement the intervention. All scripts and instruments are available from the first author.

Participants

Participants were 71 teachers enrolled in graduate education courses at a state college in amajor metropolitan area of Western New York. Detailed participant demographic data are pro-vided in Table 1. All but five of the participants were working on MA degrees to complete theirpermanent certification requirements in NYS. Four cohorts were used in this study. Each cohort

Table 1Sample Demographic Characteristics (n = 71)

n %

Female 59 83Male 12 17

Current degree Bachelors student 2 3Masters student 66 93Post MA 3 4

Concentration current degree Education 38 54Special education 5 7other 28 39

Current teacher certification Elementary 42 59Elem. and middle 2 3Elem. H.S. and middle 3 4Elem. middle and other 1 1Elem. middle and special 1 1Elem. and special 11 15High school 1 1Middle school 1 1Middle and H.S. 1 1Special education 4 6Special and other 1 1unknown 3 4

Currently teaching yes 62 87no 9 13

How many years teaching 1–3 32 454– 6 27 387–9 1 110–12 2 3unknown 9 13

Grade currently teaching k–3 28 394– 6 12 177–8 5 79–12 6 8k–8 9 13unknown 11 15

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consisted of students enrolled in a graduate course focused on reading education. The participants’previous experience with consultation is unknown.

Preliminary Intervention Selection

Three relatively neutral and moderately acceptable intervention stimuli were required for thiswithin-subject research design. To select them empirically, the researchers prescreened 12 poten-tial behavioral interventions (see Appendix for list of interventions) with data collected from twogroups that were similar to the research participants included in the main study. During the SpringSemester 1999, two groups of teachers enrolled in graduate education classes at the aforemen-tioned state college (n � 35, average teaching years � 2.9) were asked to rate the acceptability ofthe 12 behavioral interventions. They were provided with brief descriptions of the interventionsdesigned to avoid jargon and fit the school situation. For example, “contingency contracts” wasdefined as “a contract between a teacher and student that specifies a behavior for the student anda reward if the behavior is carried out.” The participants rated each intervention with three itemsfrom the Behavior Intervention Rating Scale (BIRS: Elliott & Von Brock, 1991): (a) this inter-vention should prove effective in changing the child’s problem behavior; (b) I would be willing touse this in the classroom setting; and (c) the intervention would be an appropriate intervention fora variety of children. Scores for each of the three BIRS items were summed and average totalratings were calculated for each intervention. The three middle-scoring interventions were chosenfor the research. Moderately and equivalently rated interventions were chosen to prevent stimulusbias and ensure that the stimulus interventions were inherently neither highly acceptable norunacceptable. The interventions selected for the target study were token economy, contingencycontract, and response cost.

Instruments

The Behavior Intervention Rating Scale (BIRS: Elliott & Von Brock, 1991) was the primaryinstrument used in this research. The BIRS requires participants to rate 24 statements about aproposed intervention on a six-point Likert scale. Likert ratings range from 1—strongly disagree,to 6—strongly agree. Affirmative answers indicate positive ratings of the intervention. The BIRSincludes two factors. Items 1 through 15 comprise the factor labeled “acceptability,” which wasthe first dependent variable selected for this study. Items 16 to 24 measure the perceived “effec-tiveness” of the intervention. It is possible to separate the “effectiveness” into two subfactors,effectiveness and time, but the total effectiveness measure was used intact as the second dependentvariable for this research.

The BIRS is a reliable and valid measure of intervention acceptability and effectiveness(Elliott & Von Brock, 1991). Coefficient alpha for the entire 24 items is .97. The alphas for theacceptability and effectiveness scales are .97 and .92, respectively. Comparison to the SemanticDifferential (Kazdin, 1980), a widely used measure of acceptability, yielded correlations that werereported to be in the high to moderate range.

Three additional items were added to the BIRS to measure the participants’ hypothetical“commitment-to-implement” as the third dependent variable in this research. These items com-prise the Commitment Scale (CS: Yukl et al., 1999). The CS asks participants to rate an analogintervention or suggestion on three five-point items. The items are: (1) what is your attitude aboutthe intervention?, (2) how enthusiastic would you be about trying this intervention?, and, (3) howcommitted would you be to implementing this intervention? Ratings range from 1—strongly oppose,to 5—strongly favor for item 1, and 1—not at all, to 5—completely, for items 2 and 3. The threequestions are usually given as part of a larger, multifaceted scale. The Chronbach alpha for the CS


when given as part of a larger scale is .88, but the consistency of the three items alone or incombination with the BIRS is not known.

Stimuli

Scripts. Videotape presentations were constructed from a master script of a consultationsession following the initial referral and discussion between the teacher and consultant. From thescript it was obvious that the teacher and consultant had met before, and that the consultant wasrecommending the intervention based on his understanding of the case. The sequence and majorcomponents of the video script are presented in Table 2. The referred child was an 8-year old,second-grade boy with aggressive behaviors such as pushing, shoving, and fighting.

Once the master script was completed, additional scripts were constructed for the interven-tions, experimental conditions, and filler. These additional script sections contained the variable

Table 2Major Elements of the Rational Persuasion Analog Video Scripts

Componenta Time

Intervention with RPImportance andRP Objections

Intervention with noRP Importance and

RP Objections

Intervention with noRP Importance andno RP Objections

Greeting :05 X X X

Description of behavior:request and reply 1:15 X X X

Description of past interventions:request and reply 1:25 X X X

Things child likes:request and reply :25 X X X

Consultant summary :33 X X X

RP importance of intervention �3:18 X Filler I Filler I

Fillerd 2:30 NA NA Filler II

Description and definitionof interventionb �2:20 X X X

Effectiveness of intervention:research and local examplec 3:00 X X X

RP objections and response (filler inserted aboveto objections �2:30 X X for continuity)

Closing remarks .30 X X X

Notes: aComplete scripts for each condition are available from the first author.bIntervention descriptions were constructed to be similar, but varied somewhat to accurately describe the relevant

intervention.cEffectiveness information was altered slightly to conform to the relevant intervention. For example, the relevant

intervention was correctly identified and a few small changes were made such as: “After each period of appropriatebehavior the student would get a token” in token economy was changed to “After each aggressive episode the studentwould lose two minutes of group time.”

dFiller consisted of neutral background information such as “I checked the background information and John lives athome with his parents and has a sister and two brothers.”

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experimental information provided to the participants. Three scripts were constructed to describethe three “neutral” interventions chosen from the prescreening process described above; tokeneconomy, contingency contract, and response cost programs. These scripts were constructed to beas similar as possible without giving incorrect information about the relevant intervention. Thethree interventions were presented, as much as possible, using the same words, examples, andparallel construction.

Two additional scripts were constructed to provide the experimental information. Examplesof these scripts are provided in Appendix. One script featured a description of why it was im-portant to both the teacher and the student that the intervention to be implemented (RP Impor-tance). This script was exactly the same for each intervention. The other experimental conditionscript featured three anticipated objections and responses to those objections (RP Objections).The first two objections were exactly the same for each intervention, except that the name of therelevant intervention (e.g., token economy) was inserted in one phrase. The third objection wastailored to the relevant intervention, but constructed to be as similar as possible to the objectionsprovided for the other interventions. Finally, filler segments that included some unessential de-mographic information and school history of the child were constructed to take the place of RPImportance and Objections in some experimental conditions. These segments were constructedto provide no information that might influence the teachers’ ratings. The following exampleillustrates the information provided in the filler. “John lives with his mom and dad and has twobrothers. Andrew is 13 years old and Mike is 10. Dad works for the city highway departmentand Mom works part time at a drug store. The health information was pretty much standard. Noobvious problems or history that would suggest that John has any physical or health problems.”The scripted lengths of the unessential filler segments and the relevant RP sections they replacedwere equivalent.

Prior to videotaping, the research team (a school psychology professor with a specializationin consultation, four school psychology graduate students, and an undergraduate psychology major)reviewed the scripts. Small wording changes from that review were incorporated in the finalscripts to further enhance the equivalency of the presentations. The “consultant” and “teacher”actors rehearsed until they felt comfortable with the scripts.

Videos. The videos featured an enactment of a face-to-face consultation session in an officesetting. The “consultant” was a male school psychology graduate student in his early thirties. Hewas a school psychology intern at the time of the videotaping, but his work experience beforegraduate school was not in the field. The “teacher” was a female school psychology graduatestudent in her early thirties. She had been a teacher before beginning graduate studies in schoolpsychology. Neither had substantive previous acting experience. Videotaping took place on twoafternoons, and care was taken to maintain consistent lighting, appearance, and sound quality.

Once the videotaping was complete, all segments were digitized and entered into a computerwith video-editing software. Nine stimulus videotapes were then constructed by editing the vari-ous segments together. The consultant and teacher were presented in a frontal, head, and shouldersview when speaking to aid in making the edited videos flow smoothly. Appropriate conversationalquestions and comments from both parties were inserted to break up long segments in an attemptto maintain the viewers’ interest. The nine videotapes covered each of the three neutral interven-tions, in each of the three experimental conditions. For example, videos for Token Economyincluded Token Economy with neither RP Importance nor RP Objections; Token Economy withRP Objections but not RP Importance, and Token Economy with RP Importance and RP Objec-tions. For those tapes that were missing RP Importance and/or RP Objections, filler segmentswere inserted in the videos in place of the RP sections to reduce the possibility that time differences


in the video tapes might influence the outcomes. When completed, the nine videotapes were allabout 12.5 minutes long and varied by less than 1 minute from longest to shortest.

Procedure

In the Spring 2000 semester, four groups of teachers enrolled in graduate reading educationcourses at a local state college were shown one video per week for 3 consecutive weeks. Theinstructors of the groups allowed the presentations to be conducted at the beginning of each class.Videos were presented to each group in counterbalanced order for RP condition and intervention.The researchers provided refreshments after the video presentations (e.g., cookies, muffins) as aninducement to attend and reinforcement for participation. There were no changes in classroomsfor any group during the data collection. Neither the “consultant” nor the “teacher” was presentduring data collection. The groups were told that the research focused on teachers’ perceptions andacceptance of various interventions for at-risk children. The videos were presented in counterbal-anced order for RP conditions and interventions. Each group saw three videos; one for each of theinterventions with varying order and experimental conditions for RP Importance and RP Objec-tions depending on the group. At the end of each video presentation the teachers were asked to ratethe intervention using the BIRS and the three additional commitment items. The groups weredebriefed after all of the BIRS were completed for the last session. A copy of a preliminary paperthat reported on the experiment and results was provided to participants at the end of the semester.

Analyses Procedures

Despite pretesting to select equivalent intervention variables, intervention type was identifiedas a potential unwanted influence on the outcome variables. To account for this unwanted influ-ence, intervention type was set as a blocking variable and the data were analyzed with a threeunivariate repeated measure design (Ott, 1993) using the Finn and Bock (1984) Multivariateprogram. The three dependent variables were participants’ ratings on the: (1) acceptability scale ofthe BIRS, (2) effectiveness scale of the BIRS, and (3) the CS commitment-to-implement itemsfrom Yukl et al. (1999). Subjects were treated as a random factor. The number of open cellsresulting from the within-subjects counterbalanced presentation of the videos required the estima-tion of the error terms. Error terms were consequently estimated separately forcing the maximumdf and are not reported (Finn & Bock, 1984).

Results

This research employed a within-subjects design to investigate the potential use of rationalpersuasion school-based consultation. Tables 3 and 4 present the results of the analyses. Despite

Table 3Univariate Repeated-Measures Analysis for Rational Persuasion Effectson Perceived Acceptability, Effectiveness, and Commitment

df a Commitment Effectiveness Acceptability

Intervention 2,142 5.80** 2.60 5.97**Rational persuasion 2,142 0.86 2.60 3.80*Interaction 4,205 2.00 1.30 3.14*

aEstimated df.*p � .05.**p � .01.

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our efforts to the contrary, intervention type significantly (.01 level) influenced the participants’ratings. Examination of the means suggests that “response cost” was rated significantly higherthan the other interventions on both the commitment and acceptability scales. When this variableis accounted for, however, rational persuasion did significantly influence the participants’ treat-ment acceptability ratings (.05 level) but not the commitment-to-implement nor perceived effec-tiveness dependent variables. However, the interaction of treatment type � rational persuasionwas also significant (.05) for acceptability, which required further analyses to determine the natureof this interaction.

Means for the interaction effect are presented in Table 4 and a graph of the interaction ispresented in Figure 1. The means suggest that the low rating for contingency contract in the “noRP Importance with Objections” influenced the interaction effect between intervention type andrational persuasion.

As a post hoc procedure, we examined the cell means and counterbalanced order for thepossibility of an order effect. A repeated-measures multivariate analysis resulted in determiningthat, overall, there was a significant order effect [Wilks’ Lambda statistic, p � .008, F � 2.96:Time 1 � 69.9 (SD � 12.7), time 2 � 65.4 (SD � 12.7), and time 2 � 64.7 (SD � 14.3)].Examining the univariate results revealed that the significant time order difference existed only forthe acceptability scale ( p � .002, F � 7.01).

The interaction and post hoc analyses preclude further or more detailed explanation of theeffect of rational persuasion. Overall the results of this research suggest that adding a limiteddiscussion of anticipated objections (and responses to those objections) to the information pro-vided about an intervention may have some positive effect on teachers’ initial treatment accept-ability ratings. However, this addition does not appear to influence teachers’ initial ratings of thepotential effectiveness of the interventions nor their perceived commitment-to-implement the inter-vention. Presenting additional rational persuasion is also not entirely predictable. The addition ofthe RP Importance discussion did not improve participants’ ratings. Presenting the RP Objectionswithout the Importance was rated somewhat higher than when both were presented.

Discussion

The purpose of this research was to examine whether including elements of rational persua-sion in a video presentation of an analog consultation session influenced teachers’ perceptions of

Table 4Means and Standard Deviations for the Significant Interaction of Rational Persuasion Effectson Perceived Acceptability by Intervention Type

Response Cost Token Economy Contingency Contract

No importance, no objections 66.62(16.18)

65.78(9.54)

68.33(13.80)

66.91

No importance, objections included 74(8.80)

67.13(16.74)

65.03(13.33)

68.72

Importance and objections included 68.64(12.48)

55.57(19.50)

65.00(10.26)

63.07

69.75 62.83 66.12

Note: Actual means and standard deviations.


the acceptability, efficacy, or their hypothesized commitment-to-implement a recommended inter-vention. The mixed results suggest that, for the presented situation and interventions, the teachers’intervention acceptability ratings were positively influenced by RP for some situations, but notindependent of the intervention. Even with pretesting to select neutral interventions, counterbal-anced presentation, and statistical controls for the direct influence of intervention type, an inter-action between some interventions and RP confounded the results.

Previous theoretical presentations in the school psychology literature (e.g., Erchul & Ravens,1997; O’Keefe & Medway, 1997) suggested that forms of social persuasion similar to RP might beuseful in consultation. Previous analog research in business administration suggested that RPcould influence the acceptance of a proposed course of action and the subsequent commitment-to-implement of influence targets (e.g., Yukl et al. 1999). Analog research from school psychologyabout the related influence of informational power on acceptability ratings (Clark & Elliot, 1988;Von Brock & Elliott, 1987) further suggested that RP might have more predictably influencedparticipants in this research. The analog and hypothetical nature of most preceding business andschool psychology research, however, meant that even if this research revealed consistent resultsin an analog consultation presentation, the utility of RP applications in authentic consultationwould not be known. At best, we could have concluded that RP was a promising influence model.Still, because we deliberately pretested to reduce the influence of the intervention type and care-fully constructed the video presentations to be equivalent, the confounding interaction is surprising.

One possible interpretation of the results presented here is that attempts to influence consul-tees through informational power and RP result in effects that are too weak to overcome consis-tently the consultees’ inherent perception of a proposed intervention. If this is the case, thenconsultants should probably focus more on collaborating to develop interventions that are con-sistent with the consultees’ beliefs rather than on trying to influence consultees to implement

Figure 1. Interaction between Rational Persuasion conditions and interventions.

636 Truscott et al.

something chosen by the consultant. Such an interpretation is consistent with consultation modelsthat feature collaborative (e.g., Gutkin, 1999; Meyers, 1989; Truscott et al., 2000) and participa-tory (Nastasi, Varjas, Schensul, Silva, Schensul, & Ratnayake, 2000) design elements and con-trary to expert intervention designs (Erchul & Martens, 1997).

However, to the extent that rational persuasion engages people to think (and one wouldexpect it does so more than other modes of influence), it might produce powerful and long-lastingeffects (Petty, Heesacker, & Hughes, 1997). Evidence indicates that the more thought that a per-son (i.e., consultee) gives to a case, the more likely the resulting new attitudes are to persist, resistcounterpersuasion (Haugtvedt & Petty, 1992), and influence behavior (Petty, Baker, & Gleicher,1991). A possible confounding variable in this research, then, may have been that the analog videopresentations did not stimulate the participants’ thinking enough to reach the threshold where theeffects of RP were consistently evident and strong. The post hoc finding of order effects seems tolend support to this interpretation. It is, of course, also possible that RP is not as effective aninfluence technique in the type of situation tested in this research or with teachers rather thanbusiness majors. Teachers, for example, must judge intervention effectiveness in the context of theentire classroom and conflicting demands. They may perceive that time devoted to a single prob-lem student takes time away from activities with other students and may impact negatively thecriteria that really count (e.g., the achievement of the rest of the class). Teachers may also be lessfamiliar with systemic decision making than are business majors. Decision making about individ-ual classroom issues is generally left solely to the teacher. Business majors, on the other hand, maybe more accustomed to consulting with colleagues and supervisors as an integral part of decisionmaking.

School-based consultants should not spend more time in RP than is helpful, nor should theyadopt the technique if the time required to implement it is beyond that available in most consul-tation situations. The results of this study suggest that RP as represented in these videotapedsituations is inconsistently effective and, currently, there is not enough known about it to supportits use in school-based consultation. Researchers, however, should take note of these results.There is evidence that the rational persuasion elements included here did at least sometimes influ-ence the participants’ ratings of intervention acceptability. This is particularly true for RP Objec-tions. These results and other research in business and school consultation suggest that there ismuch to be learned about the use of RP in consultation. Some business studies use role-plays tosimulate reality more closely. Such methods might be more useful for future research than the oneemployed here because role-playing might engage the participants more directly and better stim-ulate their thinking.

Consultation researchers’ efforts to understand factors that might affect various the consul-tation process using social influence techniques or methods to enhance treatment acceptabilityhave recently been criticized because of their heavy reliance on analog research methods (e.g.,Eckert & Hintze, 2000; Nastasi & Truscott, 2000). This is partly based on research such as Wick-strom, Jones, LaFleur, and Witt (1998) that questioned the connection between treatment accept-ability and treatment integrity, and the paucity of ecologically valid data about hypothesized linksbetween acceptability and treatment implementation. At this point it seems clear that there is nota direct path leading from intervention acceptability to integrity to effectiveness. Evidence exists,however, that acceptability may be an important indirect element in consultation (e.g., McDougalet al., 2000; Truscott et al., 2000). The results presented here suggest that social influence tech-niques such as RP may also exert an indirect effect on consultees. We believe it is a mistake toabandon particular research avenues (e.g., analog studies) of consultation process variables sim-ply because some research does not support linear ties between process variables and outcomes. Itis possible that existing research has not adequately captured the complexity of the consultation


process. For example, several researchers have presented complex models of treatment accept-ability to effectiveness (e.g., Reimers, Wacker, & Koeppl, 1987) that have not been tested, and theconsultation/social influence literature remains theoretical. Analog research that more closelyrepresents actual consultation situations may provide effective and efficient ways to identify prom-ising methods that can then be tested in vivo.

There are several limitations inherent in this study. First, the use of an analog video presen-tation may not adequately represent what happens in real consultation with teachers. This is alimitation of most previous school psychology acceptability research and previous business-related RP research. Second, the participants in this study all attended the same teaching college.The results may not be generalizable to teachers trained in other institutions. Teachers with astrong course sequence in behavioral interventions, for example, may have rated the interventionsdifferently. Also, although the videos were carefully constructed and worded, there might havebeen some unrecognized feature of the video presentations that influenced the results.

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Appendix

Interventions Used in the Pretest

Systematic positive reinforcement, Social reinforcers, Negative reinforcement, Extinction,Punishment, Using environmental cues, Shaping the behavior, Rewarding incompatible behavior,Contingency contracts, Response cost, Token economy, and Time-out.

Script: RP Importance Section

“It’s important to intervene in this situation now. If we don’t intervene, John’s aggressivebehavior could get worse. I’m also concerned that John’s behavior is getting in the way of himmaking and keeping friends, which may affect his relationships as he gets older. He may belearning that this kind of behavior allows him to get his own way and gets him attention fromhis peers.

It’s also important to intervene for your sake. Right now, John’s behavior is really disruptivein the classroom. You spend a lot of time dealing with John’s aggressive behavior. If we let it gounchecked, John’s behaviors will probably get worse, which will lead to more classroom disrup-tions. In other words, you’ll have to spend more time dealing with John. This takes away valuabletime that could be spent on teaching the class.”


Script: RP Objections Section (Token Economy)

“You might object to the use of token economy as a way to help John because you might feelthat there should be no tolerance of aggressive behavior in the classroom. You might say thatstudents who act aggressively toward their peers should not be allowed back in the classroom atall. However, in this case, there are no other placements available for John within the school. Weneed to work with John to reduce these behaviors in this classroom. Many children are aggressiveat times, and token economies seems to be effective ways of dealing with them.

You also might object to the time and patience required to implement this plan since it takestime away from other children. However, John’s behavior already seems to disrupt the class. Itprobably wouldn’t take much more time to give out or collect the tokens. Other teachers that usesimilar methods say that it takes just a few seconds to handle each transaction once you get usedto it. You might have to take a few minutes to explain to John why you considered a particularbehavior inappropriate. However, you would be able to choose the time you would deal with thisrather than having to take time away from instruction to deal with John’s behavior. Many teachersuse time during transitions or when children are doing individual work to clarify any questionsstudents may have at first.

Lastly, you might object to the use of this plan because it seems like you are bribing the childinto good behavior. Like many others, you might think kids should do the right thing because it isthe right thing, not because they are being paid to do it. While that is the ultimate goal, we need tostart by motivating him with external rewards. After John has learned some more appropriatestrategies to use to settle conflicts we will phase out the token economy. Token economies areways of developing positive habits. After the good behavior is consistent, they can be maintainedwith praise. And maybe, after a little while, you won’t need to praise the student at all—it wouldbe completely internal.”

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Documents

Does rational persuasion influence potential consultees?