These answers draw in part from “Cultural Responsiveness: Survey of Behavior Analysts and Recommendations from the Literature” by Zeinab Hedroj, MSc, BCBA, LBA (BehaviorLive), and extend it with peer-reviewed research from our library of 27,900+ ABA research articles. Clinical framing, BACB ethics code references, and cross-links below are synthesized by Behaviorist Book Club.
View the original presentation →Hedroj and colleagues' survey asked practitioners to identify what practices they engage in that they consider culturally responsive and what barriers they encounter to providing culturally responsive care. The findings reveal both areas of relatively consistent implementation and significant gaps between literature recommendations and actual practice. The survey provides field-level baseline data that practitioners can use to calibrate their own practice, identify areas where further development is warranted, and understand the barriers that most commonly prevent more consistent culturally responsive practice across the field.
Code 2.06 requires behavior analysts to maintain awareness of and respond to the cultural backgrounds of clients, caregivers, and other relevant parties in all aspects of their professional work. It also requires ongoing professional development in cultural responsiveness, making this a continuous obligation rather than a threshold competency that, once acquired, requires no further attention. The specific content of culturally responsive practice — what behaviors constitute adequate cultural responsiveness — is not exhaustively specified in the code, which is why the literature recommendations and the kind of survey data Hedroj and colleagues provide are important resources for operationalizing the requirement.
Survey data from Hedroj and colleagues identify several commonly reported barriers, which typically include: limited training in cultural responsiveness during graduate programs; time constraints that compete with the assessment and relationship-building time that cultural responsiveness requires; lack of supervision or consultation support from practitioners with developed cultural competence; organizational cultures that do not prioritize cultural responsiveness as a quality indicator; and limited access to interpreters or materials in the client's primary language. Understanding which barriers are most prominent allows for more targeted individual and systemic improvement efforts.
The literature recommends: conducting cultural assessments at intake to understand family background, values, communication preferences, and previous experiences with service systems; selecting reinforcers that are culturally meaningful to the client and family; choosing treatment targets that reflect family-defined priorities rather than generic developmental benchmarks; using interpreters and translated materials when language access is a barrier; building cultural humility as an ongoing orientation toward learning from clients and families; seeking supervision and consultation when serving clients from cultural backgrounds less familiar to the practitioner; and examining how one's own cultural identity and assumptions may influence clinical judgment.
Cultural competence implies a level of knowledge and skill that, once acquired, is sufficient for respectful and effective cross-cultural practice. Cultural humility is an orientation: an ongoing commitment to learning from clients and families about their specific cultural context rather than applying pre-formed knowledge about demographic groups. Cultural humility acknowledges that no fixed level of knowledge about any culture is sufficient, because individual clients are not simply representatives of demographic categories. The humility orientation leads to continuous inquiry — asking rather than assuming, listening rather than categorizing — which is more consistent with the client-centered, individualized approach that the Ethics Code requires.
Culturally responsive target selection begins with understanding what functional skills and behavioral outcomes the client and family actually value, not what a standard developmental assessment identifies as age-appropriate or typical. Ask families directly: what would success look like for your child? What skills would make the biggest difference in your family's daily life? What behaviors or characteristics do you particularly want to preserve? Compare those priorities to the assessment-identified deficit areas and identify where they align and where they diverge. Targets that reflect family priorities, grounded in assessment data, are more likely to be supported across environments and to produce outcomes the family experiences as meaningful.
This is one of the core findings of Hedroj and colleagues' research: examining the degree to which what practitioners report doing aligns with what the literature recommends. Where alignment is high, the field is successfully translating research recommendations into actual behavioral change. Where alignment is low, there is a gap that represents an opportunity for individual and systemic improvement. The specific areas of alignment and misalignment identified by the survey provide a more precise guide to improvement planning than general statements about the importance of cultural responsiveness.
The goal of cultural assessment is not to identify a client's demographic category and apply pre-formed knowledge about that category — it is to understand this specific client and family's background, values, and preferences. Useful questions include: What languages are spoken at home, and what language would you prefer for our communication? Are there cultural or religious practices that are important to your family that I should know about in designing our work together? Are there any topics or activities that would be problematic for cultural or personal reasons? What has your family's experience with previous services been like? These questions are open-ended, respectful, and focused on information that will directly inform practice — not demographic categorization.
Culturally responsive practice supports better client outcomes through several mechanisms. Reinforcers that are culturally meaningful are more effective — they are more likely to maintain responding and to support generalization to natural environments. Treatment targets that align with family priorities are more likely to be consistently reinforced across settings. Communication that matches client and family preferences builds therapeutic alliance, which supports engagement and follow-through. Conversely, cultural mismatches — in communication style, treatment goals, or therapeutic approach — reduce engagement, undermine trust, and produce outcomes that are less durable because they lack consistent support outside the treatment setting.
Code 2.06 requires ongoing professional development in cultural responsiveness. This course fulfills that requirement by providing empirically grounded information about the current state of cultural responsiveness practice in the field — what practices are being implemented, what barriers prevent more consistent implementation, and what the literature recommends for closing identified gaps. This data-driven foundation for professional development is more actionable than abstract diversity training, because it identifies specific practice behaviors to target and specific barriers to address. Completing this course should result in at least one concrete change in assessment or clinical practice, making the professional development genuinely continuing rather than merely credentialed.
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Ready to go deeper? This course covers this topic with structured learning objectives and CEU credit.
Cultural Responsiveness: Survey of Behavior Analysts and Recommendations from the Literature — Zeinab Hedroj · 1 BACB Ethics CEUs · $20
Take This Course →We extended these answers with research from our library — dig into the peer-reviewed studies behind the topic, in plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
224 research articles with practitioner takeaways
200 research articles with practitioner takeaways
194 research articles with practitioner takeaways
1 BACB Ethics CEUs · $20 · BehaviorLive
Research-backed educational guide with practice recommendations
Side-by-side comparison with clinical decision framework
You earn CEUs from a dozen different places. Upload any certificate — from here, your employer, conferences, wherever — and always know exactly where you stand. Learning, Ethics, Supervision, all handled.
No credit card required. Cancel anytime.
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.