Association for Behavior Analysis International

Delivering high-quality treatment requires practicing behavior analysts to identify, evaluate, and respond to a variety of different ethical challenges. Balancing ethical expectations within regulatory requirements while protecting themselves, clients, supervisees, employers, and the field can create daily tensions. Balancing organization’s needs and deadlines, individual compensation and work-life balance needs, and clients’ needs can lead practitioners to ethical questions and dilemmas - how many clients can one ethically serve and still remain effective and individually healthy? Balancing behavioral treatment recommendations with those of team members from other professional disciplines can lead to additional ethical questions and dilemmas - how can I best collaborate with other professionals’ theoretical positions or clinical priorities while still ensuring effective and ethical treatment for clients? Balancing organizational financial needs with caseloads and ethical requirements can create contention or incongruity between organizations and behavior analysts’ ethical requirements - how can behavior analysts adapt to organizational needs while ensuring quality client services? Decisions need to be made for when to say “Yes.” “No.” or “Maybe.” within these types of situations. This symposium addresses identifying and matching ethical issues with ethical codes, and developing strategies for responding to personal, collaborative, and organizational situations.

We submitted within the advanced level as we believed that targeting both BCBA and BCBA-D level candidates would be acceptable. Any certified behavior analyst from junior to the most seasoned would be appropriate for this symposium. Competencies would only require knowledge of the Ethics Code (BACB, 2020) and clinical practice necessities.

In today’s service delivery environment, the demand for behavior analysts far exceeds the supply. Most behavior analysts routinely feel pressure to say “yes” for the many requests they receive to take on additional clients or tasks in the frame of being a helpful team player. However, this practice often disrupts the work/life balance needed by behavior analysts to sustain their well-being and effectiveness within their role. Over time, this pressure and taking on of additional work may lead to high levels of physical and mental stress and burn-out, resulting in problems with service delivery, supervision, personal health, and attrition of behavior analysts from the field. This presentation addresses these ethical issues and provides methods for how to prevent, assess, and adjust workloads for practicing behavior analysts. Decisions need to be made for when to say “Yes.” “No.” or “Maybe.” related to caseloads and work requirements. This presentation addresses identifying and matching ethical issues with ethical codes and developing strategies for responding to personal work-related situations.

Collaboration among behavior analysts and professionals from other disciplines (e.g., Speech and Language Pathologists, Nutritionists, and Psychiatrists) offers the potential for optimal clinical outcomes through comprehensive assessments and interventions. However, differences in theoretical orientations, methodologies, and treatment recommendations can make collaboration challenging. In part, these challenges have resulted in behavior analysts gaining a reputation for being difficult to work with in collaborative situations. Ethical dilemmas often arise when professionals from other disciplines propose interventions that are ineffective, lack empirical support, or do not contain reasonable behavior change mechanisms (e.g., differential reinforcement). These situations often necessitate a nuanced ethical decision-making process and response. This presentation explores some of the ethical issues inherent in multidisciplinary collaboration. We will evaluate common scenarios where professional disagreements occur and provide practical suggestions for ethical responding within a collaborative context. Attendees will learn strategies to assess and navigate these situations effectively, determining when to say "Yes." "No." or "Maybe." while maintaining professional integrity and promoting the best interests of clients.

ABA-based service delivery represents the practical extension of applied behavior analysis as the socially significant research arm of behavior analysis. Practitioners of ABA-based service delivery work within organizations that establish policies and practices that may involve more business models than practice models. Organizational business mandates may help or harm behavior analysts’ ability to provide high-quality behavior analytic services. Behavior analysts must balance financial, regulatory, and clinical needs at the organizational level. However, they must also follow ethical requirements to ensure that client’s needs remain at the forefront of clinical decision-making. This presentation discusses the balance between organizational needs, practitioner needs, and client needs. We will include a review of policies and systems which can be helpful to ethical and effective delivery of treatment as well as those that can be harmful. Methods for assessment of needs, resource management, and problem-solving will be described in order to better prepare practicing behavior analysts to know when to ethically respond with, “Yes.” “No.” or “Maybe.”