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Thanks for visiting this website dedicated to disseminating safe and efficient functional assessment procedures that inform highly effective and humane treatments for problem behavior of persons with autism or intellectual disabilities.

The website is primarily designed for Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) who are interested in developing function-based treatments for the children and adults they serve who engage in problem behavior. We also hope to make the website accessible to parents, teachers, and other helping professionals who may have questions about the safety and utility of current functional analysis procedures.

This website is dedicated to disseminating a practical means of determining the occasioning contexts and outcomes responsible for problem behaviors like self-injurious behavior and aggression often associated with autism or intellectual disabilities. The process is generally referred to as a functional assessment. The specific functional assessment process that will be the focus of this website relies on open-ended interviewing and a subsequent functional analysis referred to as an interview-informed, synthesized contingency analysis or IISCA.

Peer-reviewed research has shown IISCAs to be a quick, safe, and reliable means to understand enough about why problem behavior is occurring to design individualized treatments capable of eliminating problem behavior while promoting essential skills such as functional communication, delay and denial toleration, and contextually appropriate behaviors (e.g., accuracy with academics, vocational skills, independent leisure activity).

This website includes relevant publications, video tutorials with associated Powerpoint files and workbooks, implementation materials (e.g., interview forms), narrated videos posted by behavior analysts who have implemented IISCAs and the lessons learned from their experiences, contact information for experts who can support professionals interested in implementing the assessment and treatment processes, as well as materials relevant to preventing problem behavior and assessing and treating sleep problems. We will also include blog posts with additional tips for implementing assessment and treatment processes with integrity, revised documents and process rubrics, and links to peer-reviewed research as each becomes available.

In order to learn how to do a practical functional assessment, we think the best way for BCBAs (or those in BCBA training programs) to navigate the website would be to progress through the following 10 steps:

  1. Click here and watch at least one of the videos to learn about the process from a fellow BCBA.
  2. Download the Powerpoint file and workbook to be used with the video tutorial.
  3. Click here to view the initial assessment tutorial, and then click here and view the first 15 min of this video. Pause the video tutorial as need to complete the relevant workbook sections.
  4. Click here and view at least three of the presentations by BCBAs who describe their experience conducting practical functional assessments.
  5. Read two peer-reviewed articles describing the assessment and treatment process. First read Hanley et al. (2014) then read Santiago et al. (2015).
  6. Read the conceptually-oriented questions and answers regarding the assessment process by clicking here.
  7. Read the additional Q&A focused on practical implementation issues by clicking here (coming soon).
  8. Download an open-ended interview tool by clicking here.

Content written, edited, and managed by:

Gregory Hanley, Ph.D., BCBA-D: Research professor at WNE, consultant, practitioner, and researcher. For more information, click here or here.

and

Holly Gover, M.S., BCBA: Lead consultant at FTF Behavioral Consulting and researcher at Western New England University

*Content has been and will continue to be developed through research and our interactions with students, colleagues, practitioners, and children and their families.