Progress Monitoring Data for Learners With Disabilities: Professional Perceptions and Visual Analysis of Effects.

This article focuses on establishing content validity for graphs used in trainings on progress monitoring for professionals serving learners with or at risk for disabilities. A survey of 57 special education teachers, behavior analysts, higher education faculty, and related service providers evaluated 32 hypothetical A-B graphs varying by behavior type, data variability, and presence of a therapeutic effect. Results showed that graphs demonstrating a therapeutic effect were rated as most likely to be encountered in practice, while graphs with variable data in either baseline or intervention phases were associated with lower accuracy in visual analysis by professionals. No significant relationship was found between a graph's likelihood of being encountered and the accuracy of its analysis, suggesting that professionals encounter both easy- and hard-to-analyze graphs at similar rates. These findings have implications for designing targeted training content to improve professionals' data analysis skills in progress monitoring contexts.