Practice
ABAI supports scientist-practitioners through the work of the Practice Board, which focuses on matters of interest to agencies and providers of behavior analysis services.
Practice Board
Objective: To develop, improve, and disseminate best practices in the application of behavior analysis.
The Practice Board's goals have been reformulated recently so that its primary mission is to bring the scholarship of a scientific association to issues facing practitioners; the Practice Board is currently developing areas in which these goals may be pursued.
Board Coordinator
Mark Shriver (2018–2021)
Board Members
David Bicard (2015–2021)
Thomas S. Higbee (2014–2020)
Paula Braga Kenyon (2017–2020)
Bobby Newman (2018–2021)
Jonathan J. Tarbox (2016–2019)
Susan M. Wilczynski (2014–2020)
Student Board Member
Katie Lichtblau (2017–2020)
Council Liaison
Kent Johnson (2018–2021)
Empirically Supported Treatments Committee (ESTC)
The Empirically Supported Treatments Committee (ESTC), led by Robert (Bob) Ross, was formed in the fall of 2011, and it has one goal: to provide clear and objective guidance to practitioners on empirical support for a particular treatment or intervention. In order to achieve this goal we believe that practitioners must have direct access to the peer-reviewed literature on these treatments.
First steps involved the committee's developing a process to evaluate the strength of specific journal article findings on a treatment or intervention. The committee's efforts resulted in the development of the Research Article Evaluation Form (RAEF). This form and its accompanying guidelines for use are in the process of being systematically evaluated to determine if independent reviewers who use this form and process arrive at similar conclusions with respect to the strength of an article's design and conclusions. Jonathan Kimball and Tom Zane have been a big part of this process and have received support from Emily White. The RAEF is part of a larger structure in which reviewed articles and ratings will be accumulated to enable ABAI (through the ESTC) to make clear statements about whether, from the perspective of behavior analysis, a treatment should be considered to be empirically supported.
The second part of the committee's work involves creating a searchable database of peer-reviewed research articles, critical review articles, and meta-analyses. Nicole Bank and Floyd Russell developed the preliminary database for the project, which will be a central location for behavior analysts to quickly and easily find the most relevant peer-reviewed research citations on interventions and to determine whether a given intervention has empirical support. Additionally, the site will provide clear definitions of the interventions as well as practice guidelines.
The most ambitious part of the committee's work is to make this whole process open and available to practitioners. The article evaluation tools and process as well as the literature identification and submission processes are designed so that after initial training, any qualified member of ABAI could become an article evaluator or literature reviewer and then be able to submit content to the committee and its site. The process and website are designed to be similar in many respects to Wikipedia, and the project is tentatively called Behaviorpedia®.
The committee is looking for volunteers willing to commit approximately 10 hours per month to the project. If you are interested, please contact Bob Ross at ross@beaconservices.org.
Committee Members
Robert K. Ross, Beacon ABA Services, Chair
Jonathan Kimball, Woodfords Family Services
Tom Zane, Endicott College
Nicole Bank, The PartnerShip
Floyd Russell, Russell Solutions
Emily White, Endicott College
Joe Vedora, Evergreen Center
Insurance Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Code Committee
The Insurance CPT Code Committee continues its work to create CPT billing codes for ABA services. Representatives of the following professional organizations serve on the committee that prepared the application:
- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Bryan King, MD; George Realmuto, MD)
- American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics (Michael Reiff, MD; Lynn Wegner, MD)
- American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (Mark Yeager, Ph.D.)
- Association for Behavior Analysis International (Wayne Fisher, Ph.D.; Louis Hagopian, Ph.D.; Travis Thompson, Ph.D.; David Wacker, Ph.D.)
- Child Neurology Society (Martha B. Denckla, MD; Walter Kauffman, MD)
- National Autism Center (Susan M. Wilczynski, Ph.D., BCBA-D)
- Private Insurance Companies: Eric Billington, Ph.D., OptumHealth; Kristie Thompson, United Behavioral Health; William Young, MBA, Wellspring Autism Network