Association for Behavior Analysis International

Oliver et al. (2015) and Roscoe et al. (2015) surveyed behavior analysts to determine what practices they were implementing during the functional behavior assessments. They both found that behavior analysts tend to conduct less effective methods of assessments (such as direct observations and interviews) instead of manipulating and directly assessing environmental variables in a functional analysis which has been demonstrated to be the most effective (Hanley et al., 2003). Many barriers were identified during these studies which have started to be addressed in more recent research and have led to the development of new technologies to assess the function of behavior (Hanley et al., 2012; Madsen et al., 2016). The purpose of this replication and extension is to determine if the introduction of new assessment methodologies and awareness of common practices have shifted how behavior analysts assess the function of their clients behavior. A survey was conducted asking behavior analysts about the type of functional assessment methods that are used in practice and how they had been trained on each method. There were 217 respondents who completed the survey with the most frequently reported method to determine the function of behavior being informal observations and descriptive assessments. The results demonstrated that most reported obstacles practitioners face when implementing a functional analysis included lack of time, space, or materials.

Behaviour analysts continue to use various assessment methods, both descriptive and experimental, when assessing the function of a behaviour targeted for reduction. Research suggests that descriptive assessments are most commonly implemented by behavior analysts even though the same behavior analysts acknowledge experimental functional analyses are more accurate in identifying the function of behaviour. Given the popularity of various descriptive methods (e.g., antecedent-behaviour-consequence assessments), the current study sought to compare two data collection methods for a descriptive assessment. The two data collection systems in this study included partial interval recording and narrative recording which were both then summarized using conditional probabilities. These results were then compared with the results from an experimental functional analysis. Five children with Autism Spectrum Disorder participated in this study. This study provides additional evidence suggesting that how data is scored and summarized may affect the outcomes of the assessment and behavior analysts should use caution when implementing interventions based on one assessment method.

Functional analyses are underutilized within applied behavior analysis (ABA) service delivery (Oliver et al., 2015; Roscoe et al., 2015). We report the results of a brief functional analysis (BFA; Wallace & Iwata, 1999) conducted with an in-home client as part of an initial intake and insurance authorization. The client, a 5-year-old female diagnosed with autism at age three and attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) at age five, was referred for reduction of high and low intensity destructive behavior across school and home settings. The client was medicated for ADHD only at school. The purpose of the BFA was to determine the function of the client’s destructive behavior and examine the effects of their medication. Guided by indirect assessment results, four rounds of 5-min attention, control, demand, and tangible conditions were implemented with the client unmedicated, followed by three rounds of 5-min control, demand, and tangible conditions repeated with the client medicated. The results of the BFA revealed higher rates of more variable destructive behavior unmedicated relative to medicated. High intensity destructive behavior was only observed while unmedicated and was primarily maintained by access to tangible. We will discuss all BFA results and considerations when implementing BFA within ABA service delivery.