ABA632 Ethics Compliance Code

Contreras, B. P., Hoffmann, A. N., & Slocum, T. A. (2021). Ethical behavior analysis: Evidence-based practice as a framework for ethical decision making. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 15(2), 619–634. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-021-00658-5.
As the number of applied behavior analysts continues to grow, ethical practice and decision making become increasingly important. Specifically, improving behavior analysts’ ethical decision-making repertoires is critical to effective and ethical behavioral service delivery within the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA). This article proposes that the evidence-based practice (EBP) of ABA (Slocum et al., 2014) provides a framework to support fluent ethical decision-making. The purpose of this article is to (a) review the importance of ethical decision-making related to the practice of ABA, (b) introduce and summarize the EBP of ABA, (c) review the three main components of EBP of ABA, and (d) discuss the broader role that EBP of ABA can play in the field of ABA. We tie the EBP of ABA to current Behavior Analyst Certification Board ethical standards and present actions that behavior analysts can engage in to support their ethical decision-making throughout.

Suarez, V. D., Marya, V., Weiss, M. J., & Cox, D. (2022). Examination of ethical decision-making models across disciplines: Common elements and application to the field of behavior analysis. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 16(3), 657–671. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-022-00753-1.
Human service practitioners from varying fields make ethical decisions daily. At some point during their careers, many behavior analysts may face ethical decisions outside the range of their previous education, training, and professional experiences. To help practitioners make better decisions, researchers have published ethical decision-making models; however, it is unknown the extent to which published models recommend similar behaviors. This article systematically reviewed and analyzed ethical decision-making models from published peer-reviewed articles in behavior analysis and related allied health professions. This article identified 55 ethical decision-making models across 60 peer-reviewed articles, seven primary professions (e.g., medicine, psychology), and 22 subfields (e.g., dentistry, family medicine). Through consensus-based analysis, the authors identified nine behaviors commonly recommended across the set of reviewed ethical decision-making models with almost all (n = 52) models arranging the recommended behaviors sequentially and less than half (n = 23) including a problem-solving approach. All nine ethical decision-making steps clustered around the ethical decision-making steps in the Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts published by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (2020), suggesting broad professional consensus for the behaviors likely involved in ethical decision-making.

Huang, W., Lee, G. T., & Zhang, X. (2023). Dealing with uncertainty: A systematic approach to addressing value‐based ethical dilemmas in behavioral services. Behavioral Interventions, 38(4), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.1969
As the number of applied behavior analysts continues to grow, ethical practice and decision making become increasingly important. Specifically, improving behavior analysts’ ethical decision-making repertoires is critical to effective and ethical behavioral service delivery within the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA). This article proposes that the evidence-based practice (EBP) of ABA (Slocum et al., 2014) provides a framework to support fluent ethical decision making. The purpose of this article is to (a) review the importance of ethical decision making related to the practice of ABA, (b) introduce and summarize EBP of ABA, (c) review the three main components of EBP of ABA, and (d) discuss the broader role that EBP of ABA can play in the field of ABA. We tie the EBP of ABA to current Behavior Analyst Certification Board ethical standards and present actions that behavior analysts can engage in to support their ethical decision-making throughout.

Behavior Analyst Certification Board. (2020). Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts. https://bacb.com/wp-content/ethics-code-for-behavior-analysts/
This document is the Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts from the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB). This is the primary document to which we will refer in this course.