Board Certified Behavior Analysts’ Supervisory Practices of Trainees: Survey Results and Recommendations

Abstract

The field of behavior analysis relies on supervised fieldwork to shape the repertoires of individuals aspiring to sit for the Behavior Analyst Certification Board® (BACB®) exam. Board Certified Behavior Analysts® (BCBAs®) who are providing supervision to those seeking certification must follow the supervision and ethics requirements as directed by the BACB. We conducted a survey of BCBAs currently providing supervision to gather information about current practices and barriers. The top areas of success and need are presented based on the responses of 284 participants who completed the entire survey, along with recommendations.

Acceptability and Feasibility of Virtual Behavior Analysis Supervision

“…At the time of data collection, most of our participants had not returned to inperson supervision, indicating that virtual supervision was occurring and was facilitating direct client observations. In addition, our participants reported that their supervisors used a variety of strategies over the virtual platform that aligned with recommendations for behavior analytic supervision (Sellers et al, 2016;Sellers et al, 2019). These results are promising as supervisors needed to quickly adapt their supervision to a novel format in a short timeframe.…”

“…The overall shortage of BCBAs (Rios et al, 2018), the high percentage of BCBAs overextended with supervision responsibilities (Sellers et al, 2019), and the growth of trainees seeking supervision outside their immediate area (Britton & Cicoria, 2019) may have influenced the introduction of virtual supervision in the field of applied behavior analysis. To understand the barriers to supervision within behavior analysis, Sellers et al (2019) surveyed currentBCBAsupervisors and foundthatsupervisorsreportedthat their schedules did not allow them to adequately prepare for supervisory sessions, discussions, or meetings with their trainees.With a high level of burnout in the field of behavior analysis (Plantiveau et al, 2018), COVID-19 conceivably intensified the marked stress placed on BCBAs to provide ethical and effective supervision. Fronapfel and Demchak (2020) indicated that virtual supervision technologies allow trainees to practice and demonstrate various behavior analytic skills with their supervisor through either an individual or group videoconference.…”

The softer side of supervision: Recommendations when teaching and evaluating behavior-analytic professionalism.

“…A more apt name for this needed skill set could be behavior-analytic profession-alism. Although teaching social and interpersonal skills is a requirement outlined in the updated BACB Supervision Training Curriculum Outline 2.0 (BACB, 2018b), supervisors report not feeling confident regarding the teaching or evaluation of these skills with their trainees (Sellers, Valentino, Landon, & Aiello, 2019). As a result, this area of supervision activity for trainees is lacking (DiGennaro Reed & Henley, 2015;Sellers et al, 2019).…”

“…Supervisors must teach and evaluate professionalism related to (1) time management (e.g., measure planned activities vs. actual activities, adherence to deadlines, attendance), ( 2) organization (e.g., measure client programming, meeting preparation), (3) prioritization (e.g., measure appropriate allocation of time toward tasks based on criticality), (4) social skills (e.g., evaluate posture, adaption to audience, select appropriate attire), and (5) interpersonal skills (e.g., social interactions, flexibility). Encouragingly, Sellers, et al (2019) recently found that supervision-providing BCBAs and BCBA-Ds (n ϭ 284) directly measured their trainees' interpersonal and communication skills (67.3%), time management (68.7%), organizational skills (67.7%), and prioritization skills (63.7%). Discordantly, the same group of supervisors who reported measuring soft skills also indicated that they felt they did not know how to measure or teach time management, organization, and interpersonal communication skills.…”

Teaching Graduate Students to Identify and Adhere to Practicum Requirements

“…Although recent graduates of behavior-analytic programs have identified areas of continued training needs, such as therapeutic relationship skills (LeBlanc et al, 2020), cultural responsiveness (Beaulieu et al, 2019), and professionalism skills (Sellers et al, 2019), no information to date has been published on the presence of or need for additional training for…”