Traditionally, discrimination has been understood as an active process, and a technology of its procedures has been developed and practiced extensively. Generalization, by contrast, has been considered the natural result of failing to practice a discrimination technology adequately, and thus has remained a passive concept almost devoid of a technology. But Traditionally, many theorists have considered generalization to be a passive phenomenon. Generalization was not seen as an operant response that could be programmed, but as a description of a "natural" outcome of any behavior-change process. That is, a teaching operation repeated over time and trials inevitably involves varying samples of stimuli, rather than the same set every time; in the same way, it inevitably evokes and reinforces varying samples of behavior, rather than the same set every time. As a consequence, it is predictable that newly taught responses would be controlled not only by the stimuli of the teaching program, but by others somewhat resembling those stimuli (Skinner, 1953, p. 107ff.). Similarly, responses resembling those established directly, yet not themselves actually touched by the teaching procedures, would appear as a result of the teaching (Keller and 'Preparation of this paper was supported in part by

Twenty years ago, an anthropological note described the current dimensions of applied behavior analysis as it was prescribed and practiced in 1968: It was, or ought to become, applied, behavioral, analytic, technological, conceptual, effective, and capable of appropriately generalized outcomes. A similar anthropological note today finds the same dimensions still prescriptive, and to an increasing extent, descriptive. Several new tactics have become evident, however, some in the realm of conceptual analysis, some in the sociological status of the discipline, and some in its understanding of the necessary systemic nature of any applied discipline that is to operate in the domain of important human behaviors.

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The use of evaluative feedback from consumers to guide program planning and evaluation is often referred to as the assessment of social validity. Differing views of its role and value in applied behavior analysis have emerged, and increasingly stereotyped assessments of social validity are becoming commonplace. This paper argues that current applications of social validity assessments are straying from the point originally proposed for them. Thus, several suggestions for improving current social validity assessment are proposed, including (a) expanding the definition of consumers to acknowledge the variety of community members able and likely to affect a program's survival, (b) increasing the psychometric rigor of social validity assessments, (c) extending assessment to heretofore underrepresented populations, (d) implementing widespread application of well-designed social validity assessments, (e) increasing meaningful consumer involvement in the planning and evaluation of behavioral programs, and (f) educating consumers to make better informed programming decisions.