Question

Describe one way to collect AND use data in the ABA process. You can describe a real example if you have one.

Answer 1

One place to start at the beginning of the school year is by creating a list of students who may have been eligible for or received targeted supports. With permission from your principal, you might ask teachers from the prior year for a short list of students who needed the most academic, social-emotional, and behavioral support. (Remember, though, that classroom environments may have signifi­cant differences, and that could be a contributing factor.) Your school’s guidance counselor and your students’ parents could be other possible resources for putting together a preliminary list.

Frequency counts

To monitor behavior in real time in your classroom, you might consider using a tally and adding to it each time a behav­ior of concern occurs. This direct observation method is a good strategy to use for behaviors that occur often in your classroom but not so often that they’re too cumber­some to count. You can collect frequency data throughout the entire day or sample it for a quick snapshot during an allotted time period (e.g., tally how many times a student is out of their seat in a half-hour period).

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