Pinpointing, measurement, procedural integrity, and maintenance in organizational behavior management
Track staff fidelity with response rate, not just percent-correct, to catch silent drift before it kills treatment.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wilder et al. (2023) wrote a how-to paper for people who run staff-training programs.
They say stop using only percent-correct scores to track procedural fidelity. Add response-rate numbers too.
The paper shows how to count staff behaviors per minute and graph them over time.
What they found
The authors found that percent-correct hides slow drift. A staff member can stay at 100% while responses get slower.
Rate metrics catch this fade early so you can retrain before performance collapses.
How this fits with other research
Cymbal et al. (2022) counted JOBM articles and saw only one in four report any fidelity at all. Wilder gives the field a tool to fix that gap.
St. Mundy et al. (2016) proved the risk: when integrity fell under 50%, a response-cost procedure stopped working. Wilder’s rate graphs would flag that drop sooner.
Davison et al. (1989) first taught behavior analysts to use count-plus-time ratios. Wilder applies the same math to staff behavior instead of client behavior.
Why it matters
If you supervise RBTs or staff, add a simple count-per-minute line on your fidelity sheet. When the line trends down, schedule booster training even if percent-correct still looks green. This keeps interventions strong and saves you from failed programs you thought were being run correctly.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
UNLABELLED: In some domains of behavior analysis, summarizing data as a percentage is nearly ubiquitous. This is certainly the case when behavior analysts report data about procedural fidelity (the extent to which procedures are implemented as designed); fidelity data were reported solely as percentage in 423 of 425 recent studies published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. In this article, we critically examine the use of percentage, especially in the context of analyzing procedural-fidelity data. We demonstrate how exclusive reliance on percentage can obscure important nuances in fidelity data and how adding response rate as a metric offers a more precise understanding. To illustrate our points, we include reanalyzed data from a recent evaluation of procedural fidelity in public schools. We conclude with practical recommendations for adopting rate as a metric in the analysis of procedural-fidelity data, thereby building on contributions of notable behavior analysts like Henry Pennypacker, who prioritized continuous, dimensional approaches to measurement. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40614-025-00433-9.
Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 2023 · doi:10.1080/01608061.2022.2108537