Choosing goals worth working on
Socially significant, wanted by the person, and worth the cost
- BCaBA
- BCBA
What the obligation is
Selecting what to work on is an ethical act before it is a technical one. The test is social significance: does changing this behaviour improve the person's life, in their own and their family's terms, rather than making them more convenient to manage? Goals are prioritised by risk first, then by how much they open up for the person — skills that unlock access to new environments and further learning earn their place — and always against the family's values and context. Interventions are then chosen on the evidence, the client's preferences, and whether the setting can actually deliver them. A procedure with excellent research support that the family will not use is not the evidence-based choice for that family.
In plain language
Work on things that make the person's life better, in their own terms. Deal with safety first. Pick methods the family wants and the setting can really carry out.
What this looks like
- Asking a family what a good day looks like before writing goals.
- Prioritising a skill that gives a person access to more of their community.
- Choosing between two well-supported procedures on which one the classroom can run correctly.
- Dropping a goal that turns out to serve the setting rather than the person.
Where people get caught
- Targeting behaviour that is merely unusual rather than harmful or limiting.
- Treating compliance itself as a goal.
- Choosing the procedure the team already knows over the one that fits.
- Measuring success only in graphs, without asking whether anything improved for the person.
If you are not sure
Ask the client and the family what they would want different, and check whether your goal list matches their answer. Where it does not, that gap is the conversation.
In the codes
- Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts Section 2 — Your conduct in practice
- 2.09 Involve clients and the people around them
- 2.13 Choose assessments on the evidence, and write up what you found
- 2.14 Choose interventions on the evidence, and prefer reinforcement
- Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts Section 3 — What you owe clients and stakeholders
- 3.12 Advocate for the services a person actually needs
On the exam
Terms used here
Related topics
Written from
- wolf-1978
- rosales-ruiz-baer-1997
- bacb-ethics-code-2022 — Selecting interventions
Written from Wolf (1978) on social validity, Rosales-Ruiz and Baer (1997) on cusps, and the analyst code's intervention-selection standards.
This entry has not yet been through independent review. Treat it as a draft, and read the official code for anything that matters.