Introduction to the Special Issue—Functional Behavioral Assessment: Eighteen Years Later

Abstract

? Building on an emerging knowledge base grounded firmly in the principles of applied behavior analysis, the 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandated the use of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) to guide the development of individualized behavior support plans for students who are repeatedly removed from school due to problem behavior. At that point, the majority of research identifying essential features of FBA and delineating key procedural steps was guided by work conducted within clinical settings with young adults with severe disabilities and intense challenging behavior. Shortly after the mandate and an expanded focus of FBA practices that included students with mild disabilities within educational settings, Sasso, Conroy, Stichter, and Fox (2001) encouraged the field to slow down the bandwagon (p. 282) and work toward creating a national research agenda and consensus within the field on critical features.Almost 20 years since the mandate, the field is still lacking sufficient empirical evidence across the wide range of disabilities, ages, settings, and types of behavioral problems regarding the necessary training to conduct FBAs with fidelity and the key system components that must be in place school wide to lead to effective and efficient behavioral supports. However, there are clear empirical demonstrations that (a) multicomponent FBAs are necessary to identify hypotheses about what occasions and maintains problem behavior, (b) targeted training and professional development are key to building an effective assessment and intervention process, and (c) function-based interventions are more effective than non-function-based interventions.The goal of this special issue of Behavioral Disorders is to present current research and discussion on the topic of FBA and functional analysis (FA) in school settings. The articles in this special issue were selected because they include a range of methodologies and conceptual frameworks to address multiple issues associated with school-based FBA and FA. These issues include the accuracy and precision of FBAs in comparison to FAs, implementation of FBAs and function-based interventions for students with stereotypical behaviors, education of preservice teachers in the FBA process, social validity of FBAs, and treatment integrity in function-based interventions.The first two papers in this issue focus on classroom applications of FBA and FA procedures. Lewis, Mitchell, Harvey, Green, and McKenzie begin the special issue by comparing and contrasting FBA with FA. In their review of the literature, they point out that early work in this area suggested FBA was limited in comparison to FA. Given the IDEA mandate for FBA in specific circumstances and the very controlled conditions required for FA, they examined the convergence of FBA and FA results conducted by school personnel with behavioral expertise. Findings indicated that, in general, there was considerable overlap between functions identified through FBA and FA by school personnel. Limitations and implications for practice are discussed, including a call for further applied research in educational settings.To this end, the next paper focuses on FBA in high school settings for students with stereotypical behaviors. Bruhn and colleagues begin by explaining that although most research suggests these behaviors serve only a sensory function, a limited body of research indicates some stereotypical behaviors may serve a social function such as access to attention or escape from task demands. Thus, they conducted FBAs with two students exhibiting topographically different stereotypical behaviors and found each student's behavior served a different function-one sensory-maintained and the other attention-maintained. Using single-subject designs, they demonstrated function-based interventions reduced stereotypical behaviors for both students. Implications for research and practice are discussed. …