Ethical Decision-Making

Pretend you are a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst working for a newly established ABA company. Your company would like to establish policies and procedures that are behavior analytic in nature. They have asked you to give a presentation reviewing the functions of behavior and explaining the importance of function-based strategies for both clients and staff.

Introduce yourself and the purpose of the presentation.

Functions of behavior

• Briefly define the functions of behavior.
• Briefly discuss each function of behavior

The Importance of Behavior Function

• Based on your readings, list reasons why identifying function is important.
• Explain why identifying function is so important to successful behavior intervention programs for both clients and staff.

Illustrating the Importance of Behavior Function

• Provide an example of a target behavior that is being inadvertently reinforced because the function of the behavior has not been identified.
• State the target behavior, the operational definition, and the hypothesized function.
• Illustrate the importance of identifying the function of a target behavior before implementing a behavior plan for staff.

: Illustrating the Importance of Behavior Function Continued

• Display the three-term contingency diagram with your example.
• Use the three-term contingency to discuss the hypothesized function of the staff's behavior in the provided example.

:Target Behaviors

• Write operational definitions for three target behaviors in the work environment. Include how these behaviors will be measured (frequency, duration, etc.).
• Discuss these behaviors and how they would be documented.

Consequence Strategies

• Write three consequence strategies related to the target behaviors.
• Explain these consequence strategies to your colleagues
• Supervisor Qualifications
• Include the qualifications determined by the BACB to supervise RBTs, BCaBAs, and supervised fieldwork.
• Discuss what it means to be an effective supervisor.

Ethical Responsibilities to Supervisees and Trainees

• List the ethics codes to must consider when implementing new policies and procedures for supervisees and trainees.
• Explain the ethical considerations in your own words.

: Conclusion

• Summarize the key points of your presentation.
• Thank your audience and ask if there are any questions.

References

Supervision, Assessment, Training, and Oversight (BACB, n.d.)

https://www.bacb.com/supervision-and-training/

Recommended practices for individual supervision: Considerations for the behavior-analytic trainee (Helvey et al., 2021)

https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.libauth.purdueglobal.edu/pmc/articles/PMC8854511/

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2019). Applied Behavior Analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson Education (US). https://purdueuniversityglobal.vitalsource.com/books/9780134798769

Jon S. Bailey, & Mary R. Burch. (2022). Ethics for Behavior Analysts. Routledge.

https://web-p-ebscohost-com.libauth.purdueglobal.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=e7d8f02c-2131-4a60-ab1b-3d11a7090313%40redis&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHNzbyZzaXRlPWVob3N0LWxpdmU%3d#AN=3060512&db=nlebk