JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2014, 47, 204208 NUMBER 1 (SPRING)

IMPROVING COVER-LETTER WRITING SKILLS OF INDIVIDUALS

WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES
ROBERT PENNINGTON AND MONICA DELANO
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE

AND

RENEE SCOTT
JEFFERSON COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

We evaluated a multicomponent intervention for improving the cover-letter writing skills of

individuals with intellectual disabilities. An intervention that included modeling, self-monitoring,
prompting, and feedback increased correct performance for all participants. In addition, the skill was
demonstrated across audiences.
Key words: autism, employment, intellectual disabilities, prompting, writing instruction

Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID)
have fewer opportunities to access and maintain
competitive employment. Data indicate that only
21% of persons with ID are employed following
high school, and 71% of those are employed in
noncompetitive segregated vocational programs
(Wehman, 2011). Researchers have suggested that
an instructional focus on transition skills before
graduation may result in increased opportunities
for competitive employment (Shogren & Plotner,
2012; Test et al., 2009). Employment-seeking
skills (e.g., interview, application development)
may be important to address because they can lead
to additional opportunities for employment-
related behavior. Researchers have previously
evaluated the effects of intervention on various
employment-seeking behaviors including choice
making (Reid, Green, & Parsons, 2003), applica-
tion completion (Clark, Boyd, & Macrae, 1975),
and interviewing skills (Hall, Sheldon-Wildgen,
Address correspondence to Robert Pennington, Depart-
ment of Special Education, University of Louisville, Louisville,
Kentucky 40292 (e-mail: robert.pennington@louisville.edu).
doi: 10.1002/jaba.96
& Sherman, 1980; Kelly, Wildman, & Berler,
1980).
One employment-related behavior that has
received less attention for individuals with ID is
writing a cover letter. Although researchers have
evaluated interventions for teaching basic writing
skills to these individuals, including spelling
(Stromer, Mackay, Howell, McVay, & Flusser,
1996; Stromer, Mackay, McVay, & Fowler, 1998),
sentence writing (Yamamoto & Miya, 1999), and
adjective use (Rousseau, Krantz, Poulson, Kitson,
& McClannahan, 1994), few researchers have
focused on more complex written responses.
Collins, Branson, Hall, and Rankin (2001)
evaluated a prompting procedure for teaching
high school participants with ID to write letters to
their peers. Although increases in letter writing
performance were observed, the effects were
inconsistent.
Because cover letters may serve as the first
contact between an employer and potential
employees, improvement of this skill may
facilitate additional employment opportunities
for individuals with ID. In the current study, we
assessed the effects of modeling, self-monitoring,
prompting, and feedback on cover-letter writing

204
 WRITING SKILLS
skills of individuals with mild and moderate
ID.
METHOD
Participants and Settings
Three men with intellectual disabilities who
attended a transition program, were actively
seeking employment, and could benefit from
improvement in their writing skills participated.
Davis was 19 years old, had been diagnosed with
Down syndrome, and had a reported full-scale IQ
score of 63. Tom was 20 years old, had been
diagnosed with ASD, and had a reported IQ score
of 52. Colin was 20 years old, had been diagnosed
with Down syndrome, and had an IQ score of 42.
All participants previously demonstrated skills in
copying to text, basic transcription, and writing
multiple simple sentences about a single topic.
Sessions were conducted at a small table in a
classroom.
Response Measurement
Data were collected on the occurrence of six
handwritten cover-letter components. Handwrit-
ing was selected in lieu of typing because the
participants had previously produced legible
handwriting and because a computer was not
readily available in their classroom. Cover-letter
components included (a) salutation, (b) state-
ment of the job of interest, (c) statement of the
applicants job-related skill, (d) statement of
gratitude for considering the application, (e) a
cover letter closing, and (f ) a signature. An
occurrence of the first component was scored if
the letter contained a formal term of address (e.g.,
Mr., Dear) and the name or position of the
addressee. The second component was scored if it
contained an expression of interest (e.g., I want
to, I am interested in) and the name of the
position. The third component required a
description of a skill or characteristic directly
related to the job for which the participant was
applying (e.g., I have worked at, I am good
at). The fourth component required the words
205
thank you and a relevant addressee behavior (e.
g., for your time, for considering me). The
final two components were scored as an occur-
rence if they included the word sincerely
followed by the participants first and last
name. Data were reported and graphed as
number of unprompted components included
during daily probes that occurred before in-
struction. Two observers collected data from
participants cover-letter samples. Interobserver
agreement for the occurrence of letter compo-
nents was assessed across all conditions, using the
point-by-point method. The number of agree-
ments was then divided by the number of
agreements and disagreements and the result was
converted to a percentage. Agreement was 100%.
A second observer collected treatment integrity
data on the teachers implementation of the
instructional package for 33% of baseline and
56% of intervention sessions. During baseline
and daily probe sessions, data were collected on
six teacher responses: (a) gaining participants
attention, (b) delivering a vocal directive, (c)
telling the participant that he may ask for
assistance in spelling, (d) telling the participant
to report when he was finished, (e) terminating
the trial correctly, and (f ) delivering praise.
During intervention sessions, data were collected
on 26 responses. For each letter component, the
teacher was scored on whether she (a) reviewed
the component, (b) followed the least-to-most
prompting sequence, (c) prompted the use of the
checklist, and (d) delivered praise for prompted
and unprompted correct responses. In addition,
the observer scored teacher prompts to read the
corrected letter and to graph daily performance.
Treatment integrity in baseline and intervention
sessions was 100% and 99%, respectively.
Design and Procedure
A concurrent multiple probe design across
participants was used to evaluate the effects of a
writing intervention package on the participants
use of letter components. In addition, probes
were conducted before and after training to assess
206 ROBERT PENNINGTON et al.
stimulus generalization to an untrained potential
employer.
Daily probes. During baseline and interven-
tion conditions, individuals wrote letters to the
same potential employer. We conducted daily
probes during baseline and before instruction
during intervention sessions, with the exception
of the first day of intervention. At the beginning
of each session, the teacher (a) presented a three-
ring spiral notebook, (b) explained the purpose
and general content of a cover letter, (c)
reminded the participant of the job for which
he was applying, (d) told the participant that he
could ask the teacher for help spelling a word,
and (e) told the participant to indicate when he
was finished by saying, I am finished. Next, the
teacher instructed the participant to begin. If the
participant did not write a word within 2 min or
stopped writing for more than 60 s during the
trial, the teacher asked, Are you finished or do
you want to keep writing? If the participant said
that he wanted to keep writing, the teacher
provided another 60-s response interval. If 3 min
from the onset of the trial or 2 min during the
trial elapsed without writing, the teacher
discontinued the trial. At the completion of
the trial, the teacher provided praise for on task
behavior.
Intervention sessions. During these sessions, a
participants previously written cover letter was
used for training purposes. For the first interven-
tion session, the teacher presented each partic-
ipants letter from the last baseline session.
During subsequent sessions, the teacher pre-
sented each participants letter from the preceding
probe session.
Intervention sessions involved four teaching
components: (a) the presentation of a model, (b)
self-monitoring, (c) response prompts during
editing, and (d) graphing. During each session,
the teacher presented the participants previously
completed cover letter, a model cover letter (see
Supporting Information for an example), and
checklist (see Supporting Information for an
example) of each component. The teacher
reviewed each letter component by stating its
name and definition and pointing to its location
in the model. Next, the teacher asked the
participant whether he had included the compo-
nent in his cover letter. Contingent on an
incorrect answer, the teacher vocally prompted
the correct response. If the participant included
the component, the teacher provided descriptive
praise (e.g., Good job, that is a salutation) and
directed the participant to mark a box adjacent to
the name of the component on the checklist. If
the participant did not include the component,
the teacher initiated a three-step prompting
procedure. First, she asked the participant to
add the missing component. If he did not
respond within 15 s, the teacher provided a bank
of three written responses presented vertically on
the page of a notebook from which the
participant could select one to use as a model.
Finally, if 15 s elapsed with no response, the
teacher pointed to one of the responses and
directed the participant to copy it. All of the
participants had a history of compliance with
copying tasks. These steps were completed for all
six cover-letter components. The teacher deliv-
ered praise for independent and prompted correct
responses. Following revisions, the teacher deliv-
ered praise for writing the letter, asked the
participant to read the letter aloud, and prompted
him to graph the number of cover-letter parts
used during his daily probe by using a pencil to
shade the corresponding number of boxes on a
teacher-made bar graph template. (All partic-
ipants had prior experience with graphs.)
Generalization and Maintenance
Before and immediately after instruction, we
conducted generalization probes using procedures
identical to those used during daily probes, with
the exception that we asked the participant to
produce a cover letter for a different job that
required different qualifications than the one used
during training. We also assessed maintenance by
conducting daily probes at approximately 2 and
4 weeks after instruction. Participants were not
 WRITING SKILLS
required to graph performance during these
probes.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 1 shows baseline, training, and general-
ization probe data. (Example cover letters from
baseline and training conditions are available as
Supporting Information.) Prior to intervention,
all three participants included few target compo-
nents in their cover letters. During intervention,
all three participants included all six components
in their cover letters and used five or more
components at 2 and 4 weeks after intervention.
Figure 1. Number of cover-letter components used by
participants during baseline, intervention, maintenance, and
generalization probes.
207
In addition, all participants used five or more
components in cover letters to an untrained
employer. Interestingly, although it was not selec-
ted as a dependent variable, Colin also showed
improvement in his use of writing conventions.
Prior to intervention, Colin used only end punc-
tuation after the last word in an entire written
piece. After intervention, he placed a period after
each sentence in his cover letter.
These findings add to the limited research on
teaching writing skills to participants with ID.
The current instructional package resulted in
more consistent and sustained performance than
in previous investigations that involved the use of
prompting to teach writing skills (Collins et al.,
2001). In addition, these results provide further
support for the use of writing instruction in the
context of valuable transition skills that may
increase participants access to employment and
thus provide potentially greater freedom to access
reinforcement.
There are a number of limitations that deserve
comment. First, we required handwritten letters
for convenience. However, it would have been
more appropriate to require typed letters, which is
commonplace for employment cover letters.
Second, our criterion for correct letter writing
permitted incorrect spelling, incorrect punctua-
tion, and limited legibility. Therefore, future
research could improve on this line of work by
targeting more socially valid response products
and systematically assessing their socially accept-
ability for procuring employment. Third, our
intervention included multiple components (i.e.,
modeling, self-monitoring, prompting, feedback).
Therefore, it is not clear which components were
responsible for improvements in performance.
Future investigations should involve component
analyses of the procedures in the current
instructional package. Fourth, writing a cover
letter is only a small part of the task analysis
required to obtain employment, and thus it may
have less utility than a training package that
addresses multiple skills that are required for ob-
taining employment. Therefore, future research
208 ROBERT PENNINGTON et al.
could add to this analysis by teaching a
comprehensive set of these skills.
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Received November 7, 2012
Final acceptance October 13, 2013
Action Editor, Eileen Roscoe
SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional supporting information may be found in
the online version of this article at the publishers
website.
Data S1. Participant 1
Data S2. Participant 2
Data S3. Participant 3
Data S4. Cover Letter Sample
Data S5. Cover Letter Check List