Unpacking the Term “Self-Management”: Understanding Intervention Applications Within the School-Based Literature

Although extensive research has supported the effectiveness of self-management interventions to improve student behavior, variability in the specific components used in self-management interventions remains. The purpose of the current paper was to analyze the extant literature in order to (a) define the various ways in which self-management interventions have been developed and evaluated, and (b) understand the effectiveness of specific, commonly utilized intervention approaches. In order to achieve this goal, we conducted a systematic review of the single-case literature on the use of self-management interventions to support student behavior. Within the 56 studies reviewed, eight primary approaches to self-management were utilized across more than one study. Prompted self-monitoring was the most frequently used configuration (N = 23); however, the use of self-monitoring plus reinforcement based on both accuracy and performance (N = 6) and prompted self-monitoring plus graphing (N = 5) were also common. Although strong mean effect sizes were identified across intervention configurations, there was also often a substantial degree of effect size heterogeneity. This heterogeneity may be explained by differences in characteristics such as who the intervention was carried out with (e.g., grade level, disability status) or in what setting (e.g., general versus special education). Implications for selecting self-management configurations, as well as conducting future research, are discussed.