ABA Finding Its Heart During a Pandemic: An Exploration in Social Validity
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DISCUSSION AND REVIEW PAPER
ABA Finding Its Heart During a Pandemic: An Exploration in Social Validity Amanda C. Nicolson 1,2
&
Junelyn F. Lazo-Pearson 3 & Jackie Shandy 4
Accepted: 14 September 2020 # Association for Behavior Analysis International 2020
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has presented practitioners of applied behavior analysis (ABA) with new and uncharted challenges. Upholding ethical responsibilities while navigating an international public health crisis has opened areas of uncertainty that have no precedent. Although there is general guidance on how to respond ethically from the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) in their publication specific to the COVID-19 crisis (BACB, 2020, March 29, Ethics Guidance for ABA Providers During COVID-19 Pandemic, retrieved from https://www.bacb.com/ethics-guidance-for-aba-providers-during-covid-19pandemic-2/), there remains a huge responsibility on the individual practitioner to make potentially life-changing decisions. In that regard, practitioners are urged to ensure that they rely on socially significant and valid decision-making processes. The goal of this article is to provide an exercise in accounting for stakeholder feedback and connecting with patients and families regarding their input on the acceptability of treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The exercise is in the form of a structured parent interview to help practitioners account for the setting variables and social validity of treatment during a crisis. It is our ethical responsibility to remember this critical dimension of our science and practice. Keywords Autism . Clinical decision making . Consumer feedback . COVID-19 . Social significance . Social validity
In March 2020, many states across the nation were instructed to systematically implement a shelter-in-place order outlined by each state’s government and with the guidance of the president of the United States. This was a result of the novel coronavirus that began to spread across the nation and take the lives of people who were considered vulnerable. Practitioners in the various essential services were left with the task of navigating their practice. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) released general guidance on professional and ethical behavior during the crisis (BACB, 2020). In addition to this professional guidance, Behavior Analysis in Practice (BAP) established the COVID-19 Emergency Publication Series. Many articles focused on providing * Amanda C. Nicolson [email protected] 1
Center for Applied Behavior Analysis, Malibu, CA, USA
2
Fresno, CA, USA
3
Advanced Behavioral Health, Huntington Beach, CA, USA
4
B.E.S.T. Consulting, Inc., Sacramento, CA, USA
guidance to behavior analysts on how to continue their practice by, for example, maintaining treatment integrity (Rodriguez, 2020), using telehealth (Yi & Dixon, 2020), and applying decision-making models (Colombo et al., 2020; Cox, Plavnick, & Brodhead, 2020). Although these articles in combination do an
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