Association for Behavior Analysis International

Join this networking hour to discuss the following topics and others related to social activism:

• How can behavior analysts be activists who use their professional skills in service of progressive goals through strategies such as advocacy and accompaniment?
• How can behavior analysts advocate for progressive goals in the course of their jobs (e.g., university instructor, clinician, administrator, etc.)?
• ABAI does not have its own ethics code; instead it relies on members to adhere to their “home discipline’s” ethics code. An ABAI ethics code that reflected environmental determinism would establish social activism as an ethical mandate because it would be arbitrary to limit a functional analysis to the individual level and ignore the higher-level systemic determinants of behavioral and social problems. This continuity of determinism implies that clients’ overall behavioral health requires activism to change harmful metacontingencies. NASW’s ethics code can serve as a model.

Join this networking hour to discuss how to apply ABA to problems of high social value and approaches that define core features and functional mechanisms. The process of implementation is important if ABA is to be applied at a large scale. In addition to effective interventions, how might we also emphasize (1) organizational systems; (2) stages of adoption; (3) personnel seletion, training, coaching, and feedback? What role might measuring fidelity implementation have on large scale adoption of ABA?

Join this networking hour to discuss conceptual issues in CBS. Questions to consider include:

• What areas of conceptual investigation in Culturo-Behavioral Science do you think have the greatest potential for leading to a practical impact?
• How do we resolve any potential tension or impact between designed social system interventions and self-organized social movements?
• What are we missing that we need to integrate/investigate as Culturo-Behavioral Science expands?

Discussion will be open to any other topic of interest to attendees as well!