POOGI for ABA

I have frequently written on this blog about practical problems that occur when Organizational Behavior Management is implemented poorly in ABA organizations. Today’s focus is the subtle ways goals can lead to learners not doing as well as they should.

In many situations, goals can be extremely helpful. Goals can help us focus our time and attention on what is really important. But when goals are used as a way to evaluate our progress, things often go wrong. The problem is that in most organizations, it is virtually impossible to prevent contingencies being attached to these evaluations, which leads to huge negative effects for our learners.

There are at least three problems that occur frequently when using goals to evaluate progress:

1. When everyone knows that they are being evaluated on goals, they now have a huge incentive to set the goal as low as possible.

If I set the goal at 20 and achieve 23, things look great and everyone can see the child is doing well. But, if I set the goal at 25 and achieve 23, I have to report the student did not meet the goal, and possibly come up with an improvement plan. Either way, the child achieved 23. The student’s results are the same. Evaluating staff on whether or not their students meets a goal sets up the situation where staff is rewarded for meeting the objective, not the child making as much progress as possible.

2. Teams will want to see regular updates on those goals.

Teams will want to see updates on goals in every area of development (e.g., language, social skills, self-help, reading, math, motor skills, behavior reduction, etc). Although this might seem completely reasonable, sometimes just a few areas are critical for a particular student at a particular time. But if goals are the focus, and you have to report at the monthly team meeting, people focus on too much at once, which will often reduce overall progress. Usually, I can’t show up to a meeting and say we are taking a couple of months off math to focus on critical skills that will make a huge difference in his life – and really, who cares about long division anyway?

3. It looks very impressive to have a lot of goals.

When you have a lot of goals, that leads to big, fat program books or long reports with fancy graphs. Everyone is very impressed when a lot of goals are being mastered. Frequently, insurance companies, school districts, advocates, and lawyers will argue for long lists of goals. Goals that are really important, but difficult, are more likely to get ignored. Instead, we end up with long lists of easy to master goals, regardless of their level of importance.

I think the long-term solution is having strong standards. Unfortunately, that will probably take years of research, and I’m not confident that I’ll see that day in my lifetime.

In the meantime, there is a lot that we can do to ease the negative effects of these types of contingencies:

• If you work with individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities, it is almost certain that your organization has this problem. Be honest about the problem. Realize that virtually all funding sources will require goals, so making sure parents, BCBAs, and staff aware that this is a common problem is very helpful.
• Development of goals and objectives is an extremely important task. Don’t take that job lightly. This will focus the time and attention of BCBA’s, RBT’s, teachers, and others for months to come. Do everything possible to ensure that the goals that go into the treatment plan or IEP are things that will really make a difference in the learner’s life.
• Managers should emphasize that they do not evaluate staff on whether or not goals are achieved. Focus on the staff behavior of interest and whether behavior change is occurring. Not whether arbitrary criteria set six months to a year ago are being met.
• Celebrate behavior changes and achieving results with learners. Do everything possible to downplay whether the arbitrary criteria are being met.
• Dramatically exceed goals when appropriate. If, when you started three months ago, 10 seemed impossible so you set the goal at 7, and now the learner can do 139, don’t fret about that. Make the best decision for the learner based on the most recent information.

As long as funding sources require evaluations based on goals, I think this problem will continue to creep up from time to time in virtually any organization. But with smart management, we can mitigate the negative effects.

If you think that you have solved this problem, I’d say look a bit more closely. Are you sure? If you have suggestions on how to reduce or eliminate this problem, I’d love to hear from you. Please contact me.

For many years, behavior analysts who were responding to other professionals about non-science-based treatments had a standard line, almost a catch phrase; “show me the data.”  Perhaps a bit obnoxious, but many were frustrated that despite overwhelming evidence of its effectiveness, there was minimal acceptance of applied behavior analysis (ABA).

Now that ABA enjoys much wider acceptance, I hear this much less often. In addition, it has been years since I’ve heard a special education teacher, speech pathologist, or other professional complain about the need to collect data. It is just an accepted part of practice of most professionals working with children with special needs. I still hear people say, “show me the data,” but now it is in the context of clinical decision making.

On this blog, I’ve frequently discussed how data collected by ABA professionals can be misleading in a wide variety of ways. But when data are collected by people who don’t have the expertise in the design of data collection systems, things are even more likely to be extremely misleading, as there are often fundamental flaws in those systems.

In some professions, it is possible to get a tremendous amount of information simply by looking at the data. That’s because there are standardized ways of collecting the measurements, and it is easy for any professional to compare those measurements. Some examples include investors evaluating company profits and loss statements, doctors diagnosing cancer, or construction workers using an architect’s blueprints.

We need that level of precision in ABA, too. It would be a wonderful thing if any BCBA could pick any other BCBA’s data and have a clear picture of what’s happening. Unfortunately, we aren’t there yet. So, what to do until the real thing comes along? Instead of saying, “show me the data,” say, “show me the video.” Often, in five minutes of video (or live observation), it is possible to get more information than hundreds of pages of data and reports.  There is no substitute to actually seeing what’s happening.

Anthony Freemont was a 6-year-old boy who would engage in serious problem behaviors if he did not get what he wanted. In fact, he could have destroyed much of the world. That was an episode of The Twilight Zone called “It’s a Good Life,” which aired 1961. Anthony had virtually unlimited power; just by thinking about it, he could turn people into different things, read minds, and change the weather. The show focuses on the complete fear in the adults willing to do anything to prevent Anthony from getting angry.

The story is familiar to me, as over the years I have frequently seen parents and school teams go to completely unreasonable lengths to prevent a child with severe problem behaviors from getting angry. A store is out of his favorite brand of mac and cheese, and the nearest store that carries it is 100 miles away? No problem. I can drive four hours to get it and be back in time for dinner. He doesn’t like anyone to wear green clothes? Everyone in the household gets rid of any green clothing. She wants to assign seats for everyone in the 3^rd grade classroom? The teacher is happy to allow it.

I call this type of behavior from the adults “dancing between the raindrops.” The well-meaning adults in this type of situation are doing something very important. They are maintaining safety. If challenging any of these situations would cause dangerous behaviors like self-injurious behavior or aggression, “dancing between the raindrops” might be a completely reasonable temporary solution. Sometimes, I’ve seen “dancing between the raindrops” from adults even when the behavior isn’t very dangerous. Many people are just afraid of a tantrum. In the short term, this might prevent problems. But in the long-term, it is disastrous and will seriously limit the child’s options in life.

If you find yourself “dancing between the raindrops,” here are a few suggestions. First, understand that this is, at best, a temporary solution. Most likely, the behavior problem will require treatment, and is unlikely to improve on its own. Second, be sure not to be fooled by the data. The data might show low levels of problem behavior. But if it is based on “dancing between the rain drops” behavior, it will clearly be unsustainable and unlikely to maintain. Third, sometimes the adults might not even be aware of everything they are doing to prevent problem behaviors, and it will take some work to show them how important it is to address.

When counseling parents or school teams in this type of situation, I strongly encourage them to provide treatment for this behavior, as if it’s left untreated, it will very likely become worse over time. Sometimes, people are so afraid of the behavior, they decide against treatment, and are just happy that they have a system in place that is preventing problems. In my view, that is a serious mistake for the long-term best interest of the child.