Categories of FBAs

The assessment procedures available to practitioners when conducting an FBA are not static and prescribed. Instead, they are intended to be a menu of techniques available to practitioners to arrive at the identification of the specific controlling variables that maintain a behavior, and to use that information to guide selection of evidence-based intervention.

For example, if physical aggression is found to be maintained by obtaining access to preferred activities, then in treatment the individual may be taught to request preferred activities using a more socially appropriate, communicative response (Carr & Durand, 1985; Saini & Sullivan, 2021). It should also be noted that FBAs are helpful in identifying individual strengths and preferences that may be incorporated in treatment. For instance, preference assessments (e.g., Fisher et al., 1992; DeLeon et al., 1996; Roane et al., 1998) may be used to identify reinforcers specific to the individual, and through direct observation adaptive skills may be highlighted.

For present purposes, however, the most common strategies used to assess the function of challenging behavior will be reviewed and have generally fallen into three categories (Roane et al., 2019):

(1) indirect assessment (2) descriptive assessment (3) functional analysis

In the following sections we will briefly describe common FBA strategies to clarify how functions of challenging behavior are assessed.