Carers' beliefs and attributions about the causes of challenging behaviour in people with learning disabilities may influence their perceived acceptability of treatment interventions for such behaviours, and therefore potentially affect intervention implementation. The current study, using a questionnaire measure with 154 institutional nursing staff examined; (i) their ratings of the acceptability of a number of interventions, including more recently developed non-aversive procedures, for self-injurious behaviour, (ii) the nature of staff beliefs and attributions about the causes of self-injury and (iii) whether such beliefs and attributions predicted ratings of treatment acceptability. Results suggested that nursing staff rated the acceptability of interventions according to the level of aversiveness, with less aversive interventions rated as more acceptable. Subjects held wide-ranging attributions and beliefs about the causes of Sffi. However, causal attributions and beliefs had little predictive value for the acceptability of treatment procedures. Methodological shortcomings of the present study, and suggestions for future research are discussed.