Association for Behavior Analysis International

In this symposium, researchers will describe three survey studies and results related to behavior analysts’ practice activities in health, spots, and fitness, and active student response strategies used in college classrooms, and doctoral level behavior analysts’ categorization of basic behavioral principles. In the first presentation, Stephanie Howell will describe survey research focused on understanding the extent to which practicing behavior analysts work in the areas of health, sports, and fitness and what their practice activities consist of in these areas. The results of this survey show that there are few behavior analysts practicing in HSF. In the second presentation, Madeline Risse will discuss survey research investigating the use of active student response (ASR) strategies in college classes. The survey of instructors in behavior analysis programs assessed the extent of their use of ASR strategies and which strategies they used most frequently. The results showed that behavior analyst instructors use a variety of ASR strategies and that almost all instructors reported using one or more approaches. In the third study, Amalix Flores will describe a survey study in which they asked doctoral level behavior analysts to identify basic behavioral principles that define the field. They presented lists of respondent conditioning terms and operant conditioning terms and asked participants to categorize each term as a behavioral principle, behavioral procedure, or neither. Participants could also categorize the term as unfamiliar. The results showed that there was less consensus than expected on what constitutes the set of behavioral principles that define our field.

Practitioners and students

Previous research indicates that typical lecture methods in the college classroom involve primarily passive rather than active teaching strategies, which may not be enough to maintain student engagement (Elicker & McConnell, 2011; Zayac et al., 2016). As such, a common interest amongst college educators has been to determine strategies to promote student engagement with the goal of enhancing student learning outcomes (Keim et al., 2023). The use of Active Student Responding (ASR) strategies in the college classroom may facilitate student learning by encouraging active student engagement and repetition of the course content while simultaneously providing immediate feedback to the student and the instructor (Keim et al., 2023). However, information on the use of ASR strategies to teach behavior analytic coursework at the college level has yet to be reported. Therefore, the purpose of this survey study is to evaluate the prevalence of specific ASR strategies used to teach behavior analysis at the college level and the contexts in which these strategies are applied. The results showed that behavior analyst instructors use a variety of ASR strategies and that almost all instructors reported using one or more approaches.

Over the history of our field, scholars have emphasized the critical importance that behavioral principles play in applied behavior analysis, underlining their central position as the foundation on which the field is built. Although one might assume that behavioral analytical literature clearly identifies a set of basic principles that define our field, there is no generally agreed-upon list. This study aimed to get consensus from doctoral-level behavior analysts on what they viewed as the basic principles of behavior analysis. To do so, we created a list of terms from behavior analysis texts and surveyed participants to identify whether each term constituted a basic principle or a behavioral procedure. The results suggest that there is no good consensus on what constitutes behavioral principles among doctoral-level behavior analysts who completed the survey and that there may be differences in the views of faculty and nonfaculty behavior analysts. Potential contributing factors to these results are discussed. This survey study constitutes a first step in focusing behavior analysts on this important topic and starting a discussion that could further clarify the principles that define our field.