Professor, Applied Behavioral Science
4050 Dole Human Development Center
Department Phone: 785.864.4840
Office phone: 785.864.0518
Fax: 785.864.5202
E-mail: keithm@ku.edu
B.A. Reed College (Sociology), 1957
M.A. University of Illinois (Sociology), 1959
Ph.D. University of Illinois (Sociology), 1961
Post-doctoral Behavioral Research Lab (Behavior Analysis), 1961-1968
Undergraduate and Graduate Courses
Research Interests
Program survival:
My central research problem has been to determine what factors promote
or impede program survival. In order to be applied, behavior analysis
must be able to design behavioral interventions that people will continue
using after their effectiveness has been established through research.
Considerable evidence suggest that teachers, caregivers, nurses and
parents stop using behavioral interventions after the research is over.
In other words, most behavioral interventions do not survive!
Initial setting:
Together with my research group, I have sought since
1969 to develop programs that survive in a cooperative dorm. The core program
is a credit system for shared chores developed in 1972, published in JABA, that
still survives. We have developed additional programs for staff management,
meetings, and education that together form a comprehensive program run by the
residents. The research team turned the program over to the residents in 1992
and left the setting. The program survives with no important changes.
Lessons:
We learned to keep our technology simple, to ensure that it produces outcomes
valued by residents, and to create a mechanism where those residents can modify
and ensure its survival. We have created the online Journal of Program Survival
(JOPS) with more details and with an extensive database of over 500 behavior
analysis articles relating to program survival. The address is: www.ku.edu/home/JOPS.
Other settings:
Our team has developed programs that survive in more conventional applied settings.
We have developed one intervention in a local business that has survived 5 years
without further intervention. We developed a program for a group home for people
with developmental disabilities that survives 5 years later and has been adopted
for use in throughout the agencies group homes in 17 counties! We have developed
a program for students with behavioral disorders adopted by a public school
with 40 teachers and 600 secondary students. Other schools are asking us to
implement the program in their school. We seek additional settings to extend
and improve our approach to program survival.
Who should apply:
Students who apply to work with me should have a thorough
commitment to a career within the field of applied behavior analysis. The training
will prepare you for promoting survival of interventions in settings of interest
to you, administering such settings, or specializing in program survival more
generally. My past students have developed career lines that include: professor
doing research on public school classrooms; research director for a juvenile
delinquency project; evaluation director of a national program of group homes
for disturbed youth; professor conducting research on community development;
state director of group homes for the mentally retarded; director in charge
of developing staff management system in an institution for the mentally retarded;
director in charge of developing staff management system in an institution for
the mentally retarded; director of the children's center of a mental hospital;
sports psychologist.
Support:
Support for students has been available through teaching and
research assistantships. Please write or email me for more information and consider
visiting KU for a personal look at the program.
What to do next: Read my basic requirements for students
I work with by clicking on My requirements.
I suggest that you read as many of the articles below as you can by clicking
on Readings. Then visit the JOPS website
and look it over. Then email me and tell me how program survival is relevant
to your future career. We can talk by phone. I strongly recommend
a visit to KU if you continue to be interested in having me as your advisor.
Representative Publications
Couch, R.W., Miller, L.K., Johnson, M., & Welsh, T.M. (1986). Some considerations for behavior analysts developing social change interventions. Behavior Analysis and Social Action, 5, 9-13.
Feallock, R., & Miller, L.K. (1976, Fall). The design and evaluation of a worksharing system for experimental group living. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 9(3), 277-288.
Johnson, S.P., Welsh, T.M., Miller, L.K., & Altus, D.E. (1991, Spring). Participatory management: Maintaining staff performance in a university housing cooperative. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 24(1), 119-127.
Altus, D.E., Welsh, T.M., & Miller, L.K. (1991). A technology for program maintenance: Programming key researcher behaviors in a student housing cooperative. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 24(4), 667-675.
Welsh, T.M., Miller, L.K., Altus, D.E. (1994). Programming for survival: A meeting system that survives eight years later. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2, 4, 423-433.
