Procedural Integrity Reporting in the <i>Journal of Organizational Behavior Management</i> (2000–2020)
Most OBM studies leave out procedural integrity—add a tiny table and beat 75 % of the field.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cymbal et al. (2022) read every empirical paper in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management from 2000 to 2020.
They counted how many studies told readers whether the intervention was done as planned.
They also flagged studies that used several staff-imposed steps yet said nothing about accuracy.
What they found
Only one in four papers listed any procedural integrity data.
Almost half of the studies were at high risk because many people ran the program with no check on quality.
How this fits with other research
Wilder et al. (2023) extends this worry. They say raw percentages hide drift; add response-rate metrics to catch it.
St. Mundy et al. (2016) shows why the gap matters. When integrity fell under 50 %, a response-cost system stopped working.
Weeden et al. (2010) used the same audit style in self-injury FA papers and found safety rules missing, echoing the OBM pattern.
Wine et al. (2025) surveyed OBM researchers and found many also skip consent forms, hinting the field has wider reporting habits.
Why it matters
If you write or review OBM studies, add a short integrity table before you submit. State who checked, how often, and the raw counts. This one move lifts your paper above three-quarters of the field and shields your results from doubt.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In behavior analytic research, procedural integrity refers to the extent to which the independent variable is implemented as described. Collecting and reporting data on procedural integrity are important for assessing the internal validity of a study; it assists in verifying that the independent variable, and not an extraneous variable, is responsible for intervention effects. Previous research suggests that data on procedural integrity are infrequently reported in behavior analytic studies. In organizational behavior management in particular, no recent evaluation of the reporting of data on procedural integrity exists. In the current study, we examined all empirical articles published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM) from 2000 to 2020 to examine reporting of data on procedural integrity. We found that only 23.7% of studies reported these data. Furthermore, we found that 43.8% of studies appear to be at high risk, meaning they included multiple person-implemented intervention components and no measure of procedural integrity. We conclude by offering some possible reasons as to why the number of JOBM studies reporting these data is so low and by suggesting some ways to increase the collection and reporting of procedural integrity data.
Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 2022 · doi:10.1080/01608061.2021.2014380