When Cultural Awareness Reveals Conflicting Cultural Values: A Pragmatic Approach
Use a quick dual check—client benefit plus cultural benefit—when values collide and you will keep more stakeholders on board.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Delgado et al. (2024) wrote a how-to paper for BCBAs.
They asked: what should you do when a client’s goals clash with their cultural group’s values?
The team sketched a two-step check. First, test if the goal is good for the client. Second, test if it is good for the culture. They call the tool a habilitative-validity rubric.
What they found
The paper does not give new data. Instead it gives a map.
The map shows how to keep both the client and the culture in the loop while you write goals.
The end product is a shared goal that widens reinforcers for the person and the group.
How this fits with other research
Holburn (2001) said person-centered plans can live inside ABA if you check social validity. Delgado adds a second layer: cultural-group validity.
Nava et al. (2019) tried student-made videos in a behavior class. The videos felt more culturally relevant but did not raise quiz scores. Their data back up Delgado’s point: cultural tweaks boost engagement even when skill gains stay flat.
Safer-Lichtenstein et al. (2019) counted who gets into social-skills trials: mostly white, male, higher-IQ clients. Delgado’s model gives you a way to fix that skew by building cultural reinforcers into the study design.
Why it matters
You can use the rubric next time a parent says “eye contact is rude in our culture” or a teen wants goals the elders reject. Walk both sides through the two checks, rewrite the goal together, and keep everyone invested. It takes one extra meeting and may save months of dropped sessions later.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one current goal, ask the client and a cultural elder to rate its habilitative value, and adjust any part that scores low for either side.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Cultural awareness reminds ABA service providers of the importance of considering the cultural practices of others when programming for behavior change. Decisions about the appropriateness of services may be difficult, however, when the values of the client conflict with the values of the culture(s) to which the client belongs or with the cultural biases of the practitioner. To minimize such conflicts, we propose a decision-making model that integrates client-centered and culture-centered assessments of habilitative validity. Throughout the proposed evaluation process, the behavior analyst and the recipients of services collaborate to refine program goals that will increase access to reinforcers for the client and their cultural groups. Given that cultures arrange reinforcers and punishers for the individual, assessing habilitative and social validity for the cultural groups affected by services is emphasized as an essential component of the model. We illustrate how the proposed model could be used to suggest appropriate courses of action by analyzing a situation that may involve conflicts of values.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2024 · doi:10.1007/s40617-023-00826-9