Effects of the Good Behavior Game on Challenging Behaviors in School Settings

22 peer-reviewed journal articles, single-case designs

Mostly general-education elementary classrooms; challenging behaviours including disruption, off-task behaviour, aggression, talking out and out-of-seat behaviour.

A meta-analysis of SINGLE-CASE research, synthesised with effect sizes, percent of non-overlapping data, percent of all non-overlapping data and hierarchical linear modelling. This is the design class the Good Behavior Game literature is actually built on and it should be read for what it is - within-classroom reversal designs measuring observed behaviour during and immediately after the game, with no independent achievement outcome, no randomisation and severe publication filtering. Its estimates are not commensurable with the cluster-randomised trial estimates in this topic.

Moderate to large effects on challenging behaviours, and the effects were immediate. The game was most commonly used for disruptive behaviour, off-task behaviour, aggression, talking out and out-of-seat behaviour, primarily in general-education elementary settings, and correct application of the reward procedures moderated effectiveness. No academic outcomes and no follow-up beyond the withdrawal phase.

Not applicable - within-subject reversal designs.

The immediate behavioural effect of the game while it is being played is the best-replicated result in this literature and is not in dispute; Bowman-Perrott et al. 2015 reproduce it on an overlapping single-case corpus with TauU = .82. What does not replicate is the claim that playing it changes anything measured later or elsewhere.