This study looked at the responses of paid carers to incidents of challenging behaviour. The author was interested in the potential inconsistency of responses. Studies of responses to challenging behaviour have used stimuli that might generate different responses from carers to those that might be generated by actual instances of behaviour of real people.

To test this, he worked with 62 paid carers and them to report attributions, emotions and intended behavioural responses to behaviour presented by an unnamed person and the same behaviour presented by a named and known person. The carers were also asked to complete a scale of behavioural knowledge.

The results showed differences in responses to behaviour by known or unknown individuals. The carers made more internal and global attributions and tended to identify themselves as less optimistic in response to vignettes relating to named and known people over those of unnamed people.

When looking at the application of Weiner’s motivational model of helping however, the researcher found that  data from both unnamed and named vignettes were consistent in demonstrating a mediated model for controllability, anger and helping intention.

The conclusion from the study is that unnamed vignettes may “underestimate the intensity of carers’ responses to challenging behaviour”

Carers’ Responses to Challenging Behaviour: A Comparison of Responses to Named and Unnamed Vignettes, Dagnan D, in Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 25: 88–94.