Low publication rate of 2005 conference presentations: implications for practitioners serving individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities.
Fewer than 1 in 10 autism-ID conference CE talks become published studies, so view them as tentative until peer-reviewed data appear.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors checked what happened to every autism or ID talk given at two big 2005 conferences.
They looked for later peer-reviewed papers that matched each talk.
Only talks that offered CE credits for BCBAs were counted.
What they found
Fewer than 1 in 10 CE talks ever became a published study.
This means most conference credits rest on ideas that never faced peer review.
How this fits with other research
Gitimoghaddam et al. (2022) later mapped 770 ABA outcome studies. Many started as the same 2005-era talks, showing the rare ones that did reach print shaped today’s evidence base.
Xenitidis et al. (2010) ran a small in-house training that DID get published and showed staff gains. Their example proves good training can produce peer-reviewed data—conference organizers just seldom follow through.
Leaf (2025) now calls for training reform, citing the 2014 finding as proof the CE pipeline needs tighter quality control.
Why it matters
When you pick CE events, ask if the speaker’s work has passed peer review. If not, treat the content as a bright idea, not a proven practice. Push providers to share data or pilot it yourself and collect data before wide use.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study determined the percentage of presentations at the annual conference of the Association for Behavior Analysis in 2005 with the autism (AUT) and developmental disabilities (DDA) codes (N=880) that (a) provided continuing education credits (CEs) for Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) and Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts (BCaBAs) and (b) included content that was published in a peer-reviewed outlet. Results indicate that only 77 (8.8%) presentations were ultimately published. Although posters were not eligible for CEs, posters accounted for 57.1% of the published presentations. Specifically, posters presented by a university-affiliated presenter accounted for 44.2% of presentations with published content. As a whole, only 10.4% of AUT and DDA presentations offering CEs contained data sets that were published. Considered together, these results suggest that the content provided to BCBAs and BCaBAs for CEs may not be adequately measured or sufficiently rigorous to guide clinical practices.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.07.023