What Counts as High-Quality Practitioner Training in Applied Behavior Analysis?

Critchfield (2015) wrote a think-piece, not an experiment. The author asked one blunt question: should we keep using faculty research papers as the gold standard for judging ABA graduate programs?

The paper lists common beliefs. People often assume that famous researchers make the best teachers. Critchfield (2015) says that link is shaky.

The author found no proof that busy researchers produce better practitioners. Faculty fame and student skill are not the same thing.

The paper argues we need new yardsticks. BCBA exam pass rates, client outcomes, or supervisor ratings might tell us more.

Sidman (2011) set the stage. That paper said, "Count student publications, not faculty ones." Critchfield (2015) widens the lens and says, "Wait—maybe neither count matters for practice skill."

Shepley et al. (2018) gave real data. They showed that on-campus, ABAI-accredited programs boost BCBA pass rates. Faculty research output was not part of that winning recipe.

Sleiman et al. (2020) and Lepper et al. (2023) built decision models. They linked program features to pass-rate numbers. Their work gives schools a concrete, numbers-first way to design training, answering the call from Critchfield (2015) for better metrics.

If you hire BCBAs or teach in a program, do not be dazzled by citation counts. Ask for graduate outcome data instead. Push your program to track BCBA pass rates, client improvement, and supervisor ratings. Share those numbers with applicants. In short, judge a program by what its students can do, not by how often its professors hit publish.