A promising approach to addressing challenging behavior in schools is to develop and implement function-based interventions (Dunlap et al., 2006; Hanley, Iwata, & McCord, 2003). Function-based interventions are individualized interventions in which five key outcomes of functional assessment (i.e., identification of challenging behavior, antecedents, function, consequences, and positive alternative behaviors) are linked to intervention strategies (Homer, 1994; Sugai, Homer, Sprague, 1999). The Functional Assessment and Intervention System (FAIS) is a set of systematic procedures and tools designed to facilitate the functional assessment – intervention linkage process (Stoiber, 2004). Three primary goals of the current study were to determine: (1) the extent to which collaborative teams of educators implementing the FAIS used functional assessment data in the development of function-based interventions; (2) the relationship between the extent to which functional assessment data was linked to intervention and the type of challenging behavior exhibited by the child for which the intervention was developed; and (3) the correlation between the extent to which functional assessment data was linked to intervention and the collaborative teams' global ratings of the students' improvement in behavior from a pre-intervention baseline to a post-intervention follow-up.

Sixteen collaborative teams of educators received explicit training in the functional assessment – intervention process. Subsequently, the content of FAIS Record Forms for nineteen students, ages 3 to 7, were coded according to criteria that described the degree to which six main functional assessment – intervention linkages were evident. Furthermore, a descriptive error analysis was conducted to identify mistakes teams made in attempting to link functional assessment data to intervention strategies. Results indicate that (a) overall, teams demonstrated relatively good understanding and treatment integrity in following the functional assessment – intervention linkage process, with 13 out of 19 intervention plans (68%) approximating an 80% or higher success rate in demonstrating various aspects of the six functional assessment – intervention linkages; (b) teams had a significantly lower capacity to consistently and completely link all of the key outcomes of functional assessment to intervention strategies (the majority of the intervention plans (89.5%) successfully made only one, two, three, or four of the linkages, while none of the intervention plans successfully made five of the linkages, and only 10.5% successfully made all six of the linkages); (c) the type of challenging behavior exhibited by the child and the extent to which the functional assessment – intervention linkages were present did not appear to be significantly related; and (d) the correlation between the teachers' ratings of students' behavioral improvement from pre-intervention to post-intervention and the extent to which the functional assessment – intervention linkages were present in the intervention plans was statistically significant, with greater linkages being correlated with greater improvement. The results of the current study have important implications and directions for future research pertaining to training needs for collaborative teams of educators related to function-based interventions and the broader research agenda aimed at establishing the treatment validity of functional assessment.