The licensing of behavior analysts: Protecting the profession and the public.

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND CURRENT CONCERNS The need for states to regulate the practice of behavior analysis and for behavior analysis in turn to become a recognized applied discipline is a growing issue (see Cautilli & Dziewolska, 2008). While behavior analysis is an independent academic discipline having its own training programs, offering degrees at the master's and doctoral levels, these programs are often not tailored to prepare the graduate for licensure in existing mental and behavioral health professions, such as counseling, marriage and family therapy, or clinical psychology. There are manifold reasons for this. One of the major historical reasons is that the behavioral model of human development originated outside of the field of psychology at the University of Kansas in the Family Life Department located in the department of home economics (Baer, 1993), which placed it outside of psychology and opened its training programs to greater focus on behavioral intervention, while focusing less on other aspects of psychological knowledge. Another historical factor that remains powerfully influential is that behaviorism was and still is viewed as a dead area by many in both academic and clinical psychology. The cognitive revolution in academia (1) (see Robinson-Riegler & Robinson-Riegler, 2003) and the prevalence of psychoanalytic and humanistic models--as well as the incorporation of some New Age ideas--in the clinical realm can be viewed as contributing factors (see Dawes, 1994; Lilienfeld, Lynn, & Lohr, 2003). Indeed, some academic institutions effectively expelled behaviorists from psychology departments (for one battle see Wyatt, 1991). In spite of psychology's relative neglect of behavior analysis, the field of behavior analysis has made significant contributions to many areas of human treatment, including neurological rehabilitation (Wood, 1987), developmental disorders such as autism (Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, 1999), and behavioral elements of psychiatric disorders (Salzinger, 1998). A burgeoning area of interest in which applied behavior analysis has shown success is crime reduction, which places behavior analysis as a sought after service in the now growing field of community re-entry. Overall, behavioral programs based on the operant and respondent conditioning procedures of behavior analysis have been shown to lead to a 13-20% reduction in criminal recidivism (Redondo-Illescas, Sanchez-Meca, & Garrido-Genoves, 2001). While this is modest by intervention standards in other areas, these numbers taken across the entire prison population represent a substantial reduction in criminal activity and a substantial reduction in the pain brought by crime to victims and their family members, as well as the family members of offenders. Studies have shown that behavior modification/analysis procedures can reduce criminal activity of those with ADHD by as much as 50% (see Satterfield & Schell, 1997; Satterfield, Satterfield, & Schell, 1987). In addition, parenting models based on operant conditioning procedures have been shown consistently to reduce conduct disorders in children and adolescents, prevent delinquency, and have sustained long term effects (Cautilli & Tillman, 2004; McMahon & Wells, 1998). With sex offenders, behavioral programs are a promising practice for reducing socially inappropriate sexual desires and behavior (Marshall, Jones, Ward, Johnston, & Barbaree, 1991). It is our belief that in a free market society the public should have access to choose this type of professional--yet current insurance laws block such access. These laws suggest that only licensed professionals can receive reimbursement in essence locking behavior analysts out of this market. Since behavior analysis is not yet a licensed profession, ready access to these effective interventions may be limited. Given the historical context mentioned above, most programs in clinical psychology or counseling do not provide more than a cursory glance at the theory, techniques, or clinical evidence that undergird applied behaviorism (Dorsey & Mikolsky, in preparation). …