Abstract
Few attendance interventions have (a) addressed the issue of absenteeism as it applies to part-time adolescent employees, (b) distinguished between planned and unplanned absences, and (c) presented a cost-effectiveness analysis of the intervention. This study employed an A-B-A reversal design, including a small monetary bonus for attendance by part-time adolescent employees. Results indicate a 60% reduction in average group absences during the monetary contingency phase as compared to both baseline phases. The organization spent a total of $264 on monetary incentives during the intervention phase and reduced time spent on hiring and training substitute personnel by approximately 60%. Supervisors reported that a better staff–child ratio helped decrease chaos in the classroom and promoted an overall improvement in the quality of the youth groups.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the youth group leaders and their parents for participation in this study and the organization for its support. The authors also wish to thank Ari Friedman and Dr. Ari Spiro for their dedication to the project and assistance with data collection.
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This study was not funded.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
The work described has not been published before. It is not under consideration for publication anywhere else, and its submission for publication has been approved by all coauthors.
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Berkovits, S.M., Alvero, A.M. The Effects of Monetary Incentives on Planned and Unplanned Absences in Adolescent Part-Time Employees: a Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. Behav Analysis Practice 12, 162–166 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-018-00274-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-018-00274-w