Saturday, May 12, 2018

Important Functional Behavior Assessment Steps To Be Followed

By Harold Olson


Functional Behavioral Assessment, FBA, is designed to identify, evaluate and devise an intervention plan to the behavior of a given individual. It is mostly used for students who behave in an unusual manner. The approach aims at getting to the root cause of the problem and creating an appropriate team to intervene. Functional behavior assessment steps enumerate the who, what, how, why, where and when is the problem at hand.

The initial objective of FBA was to help in identifying students with abnormal behavior and coming up with measures to keep the problem in check. It targeted students with intellectual disability such as those who had autism. Some of the key pointers that helped in picking them out included lagging way behind academically, poor social interaction and attention seeking behavior.

The first step in FBA is to identify the problem. The individual under study must first be accurately defined. The assessor then takes time to objectively study them in various settings and define their pattern of behavior. This may take quite sometime and one needs to be forbearing in order to come up with a detailed report. Several factors such as culture should be considered in the process.

The next step is to gather information using both direct and indirect methods. Direct assessment involves observing the problem firsthand and taking note of the circumstances surrounding the problem. The indirect method uses the opinion of a third party to assess the behavior of the subject and to get to understand them using a different perspective. The third party is usually a person close to the subject such as parents, teachers, siblings and friends. Various tools can be used in indirect assessment, including questionnaires and interviews.

After collecting data, the next step is to formulate a hypothesis which aims at drawing conclusions from the data collected. For example, some individuals behave the way they do because they feel neglected. Dismal academic scoring could be due to lack of knowledge and skills. Misbehavior could also be because the subject may not be aware that their actions are outside the norm.

The fourth step entails coming up with an intervention plan which aims at modifying or changing the behavior of the individual in entirety. It incorporates people who directly affect the life of the subject. In the employee example, several categories of people need to be brought in to ensure the plan is fully implemented. If the subject is a student, it may involve their teacher, friend, caretaker and sibling among other relevant groups.

The final step in FBA is to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Data collection from close contacts and direct observation are the main tools used in analysis. If the intervention proves fruitless, the team needs to re-evaluate and come up with a different approach.

In a nutshell, the main steps in functional behavioral assessment include problem identification, data collection, hypothesis creation, intervention and outcome evaluation. Clearly, it is not a single day process neither is it a single person task. It takes a good amount of time and team effort to start seeing results. One has to be resourceful and objective for the process to be a success.




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