Ethics standards in behavior analysis exist to protect vulnerable individuals, guide professional conduct, and strengthen the profession. They are designed to function as antecedents that shape practice design, as discriminative stimuli that guide decision-making during ethical dilemmas, and as response criteria for addressing violations.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Verbal Beginnings
Take This Course →Including ethics, supervision, and topics like this one. New live CEU every Wednesday.
Join Free →In our profession, ethics standards are meant to describe things that should or should not be done to protect vulnerable individuals, practitioners, and the profession. As antecedents, they can help us design our practices, processes, and systems such that we are maximizing benefits and minimizing risks. Faced with an ethical dilemma, they can guide our discriminations, choices, and action plans. In the unfortunate event that ethics standards are violated, they can help us understand the risks and harms and develop a plan of action to address the immediate issue and work to minimize future issues. The Code of Ethics for Behavior Analysts (BACB, 2020) calls us, as certified professionals, to be familiar with its contents, to education others about it, and to engage directly with others when we are concerned with potentially unethical behavior. Unfortunately, our profession's ethics standards have, in some instances, been weaponized. That is, the Ethics Code is sometimes used in a threatening or punishing way and can be exploited in the pursuit of exercising power over others. In this talk we will explore some of the contingencies that may drive the weaponizing of the Ethics Code and how, as a community, we might do better.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | Ethics |
| COA | 1 | — |
Tyra Sellers is the owner of TP Sellers, LLC consulting and Scholar-in-Residence at Pass the Big ABA Exam (PTB). She earned a B.A. in Philosophy and M.A. in Special Education from San Francisco State University, a J.D. from the University of San Francisco, a Ph.D. from Utah State University, and is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst®. Her professional and research interests focus on professional ethics, training and supervision, assessment and treatment of severe problem behavior, and variability. Dr. Sellers has over 30 years of clinical experience working with individuals with disabilities in a wide variety of settings. She has held positions as an Assistant Professor at Utah State University, Director of Ethics at the Behavior Analyst Certification Board®, and CEO of the Association of Professional Behavior Analysts(APBA). She carries out reviews for several joirnals, has published several journal articles, four co-authored book chapters, co-authored books focused on supervision and mentorship and applied ethics for behavior analysis, and a workbook pair for consulting and new supervisors. She's been a vegetarian for 40 years, she loves flowers, she thinks Twizzlers should be uninvented, and she hopes you know how amazing you are!
Side-by-side comparison with a clinical decision framework
Research-backed educational guide for behavior analysts
Research-backed answers to common clinical questions
All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.