There are a few answers to this question. My primary job is providing behavioral consultation in public school settings, which usually involves conducting Functional Behavioral Assessments and developing associated Behavior Support Programs. When I am working in schools, I am almost always the only Behavior Analyst, or even the only person with some level of training in Applied Behavior Analysis, in the room. As a result, I find that I have to do a lot of explaining and educating when I am working with non-behaviorally oriented colleagues. So part of what I want to do here is to write about technically sound (I hope) behavioral procedures and describe them in an accessible manner. For example, there are a lot of online descriptions of the process of the Functional Behavioral Assessment. However, if you Google Analog Functional Analysis, you tend to get lots of references to articles that are published in the primary research literature. This isn’t terribly helpful if you’re a parent and someone has asked for consent to conduct this type of assessment for the betterment of your child. Arguably, it is the responsibility of the Behavior Analyst to explain behavioral procedures and their associated rationales in plain English, but if a parent wanted to get more information on an FA procedure on their own, I think it would take a little bit of digging. With this example, you could easily substitute the word parent for special educator, para-professional, speech therapist, occupational therapist, school psychologist, guidance counselor, building administrator, and so on.
So is this site supposed to function as FAQ for behavioral terms and procedures? Not necessarily. Instead, I plan to write about some common behavioral topics, and discuss their application in non-clinical settings (i.e., schools, homes, communities, etc…) that I hope will be of interest to some indeterminate number of stakeholders. Moreover, I will do my best to discuss these topics in an accessible manner.
I also plan on writing occasional pieces on the practice of Behavior Analysis itself, particularly in the context of consultation services. So even though some of the posts on this site will be introductory in nature, I am hoping that BCBA’s and other people with advanced training will find some interesting content here.
These are just some initial thoughts as it relates to the content of this site. In the end however, we are shaped by consequences, so feel free to use the comments section to help me develop the direction of this endeavor!