ETHICS Flashcards
ETHICS
-Behaviors, Practices, and Decisions that address 3 fundamental questions that guide how you conduct yourself to help others improve their physical, social, psychological, familial, or personal condition.
Why is Ethics Important?
-To further the welfare of the client.
Three (3) Fundamental Questions of Ethical Practice:
- ) What is the Right Thing to do?
- ) What is Worth Doing?
- ) What does it mean to be a Good Behavior Analyst?
What is the Right Thing to do?
- Considerations related to Cultural Practices. What may be acceptable in one culture is not in another.
- Differences across Time. What may be acceptable 20 years ago is not today.
Things to Help You Guide the Decision-Making Process
- Professional Training and Experience: Your training as a Behavior Analyst should ALWAYS OVERRIDE your personal history.
- Personal History: Your individual cultural, religious, or social background. If you cannot get help or change your behavior (if your personal history is impacting your clinical decision-making process), excuse yourself from the case.
- The context of Practice: Refers to where you practice and the specific nature of the job (e.g., home, school, etc.). Determines what is legal vs. illegal, ethical vs. unethical.
What is both illegal and unethical?
- ) Misrepresenting promised services or skills.
- ) Stealing a client’s belongings.
- ) Abusing a client, physically, emotionally, financially, socially, or sexually.
- ) Engaging in consensual sexual relations with persons under age 18.
What is legal, but unethical?
- ) Breaking a professional confidence.
- ) Accepting valued heirlooms in lieu of payment.
- ) Engaging in consensual sex with a client over the age of 18.
What are Ethical Codes of Behavior?
- Guidelines that specify what IS a violation.
- Guidelines for deciding a course of action or conducting professional duties.
- Guidelines to help to discriminate between legal and ethical distinctions making us more likely to:
- Provide effective services.
- Maintain sensitivity toward clients.
- Not break the law or our professional standards of conduct.
What is Worth Doing?
- Addresses the goals and objectives of practice and forces us to ask the questions:
1. What are we trying to accomplish?
2. How are w trying to accomplish it?
3. Is the objective social valid?
4. What is the Risk-Benefit ratio?
Social Validity
- When results show meaningful, significant, and sustainable change.
- When the goals, procedures, and results of an intervention are socially acceptable to the client, the behavior analyst, and society.
- Not every skill has social validity.
- Social Comparison:
- Comparison of the performance of clients exposed to the intervention with an equivalent or “typically developing” group.
- Limitation: Normative data may not be really relevant for the client’s functioning. - Subjective Evaluation of Experts:
- Evaluation of the client’s performance by experts who are very familiar with the client.
- Limitation: Subjective evaluation of experts may not tell us about the success of an intervention.
Two (2) Ways to Assess Social Validity
What Does it Mean to be a Good Behavior Analyst?
- Following professional codes of conduct (BACB)
- Keeping client’s welfare in your ideas.
The Golden Rule:
- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
A Good Practitioner is Self-Regulating
- Seek ways to calibrate decisions over time to ensure that values, contingencies, and rights and responsibilities are integrated and an informed combination of these are considered.
Three (3) Reasons Why we Abide by Ethics: MHS
- MEANINGFUL CHANGE: To produce MEANINGFUL behavior CHANGE of social significance to the client.
Increase the likelihood of appropriate services being rendered to individuals. - HARM: To reduce/eliminate HARM (e.g., poor treatments, SIB, etc.).
- STANDARDS: To conform to the ethical STANDARDS of learned societies and professional organizations.
What Are Professional Standards?
- “Standards” is an umbrella word for everything
- Standards are written guidelines that provide a direction for conducting the practices associated with an organization.
Behavior Analyst Certification Board:
- Certifies individual practitioners.
- In 1999, the BACB started credentialing behaviorists in the US and other countries. The BACB certification is based in Florida’s certification program. It ensures consumers that individual’s specialization is ABA.
Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA)
- Accredits university programs.
Five (5) Documents That Describe Standards of Professional Conduct and Ethical Practice For ABA: TLCEPBT
- ) TASK LIST: The BCBA and BCaBA Behavior Analyst TASK LIST 4th Edition (BACB), 2015.
- ) CODE: Professional and Ethical Compliance CODE for Behavior Analysts (the “CODE”) (BACB), 2016.
- ) EDUCATION: The Right to Effective EDUCATION (Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA)), 1990.
- ) Psychologists: Ethical Principles of PSYCHOLOGISTS and Code of Conduct (American Psychological Association (APA)), 2010.
- ) BEHAVIORAL TREATMENT: The Right to Effective BEHAVIORAL TREATMENT (Association for Behavior Analysis), 1989.
BCBA and BCaBA Behavior Analyst 4th Edition Task List:
- BACB
- Effective Jan 1, 2015.
- Describes knowledge, skills, and attributes expected of a behaviorist.
- Describes numerous tasks across 3 main sections.
BACB
- Effective Jan 1, 2016. All BACB applicants, certificants, and registrants are required to adhere to the Code.
- Most recent revised version: Aug 11, 2015.
- The BACB has consolidated, updated, and replaced 2 of their old ethical documents:
a. The Professional Disciplinary and Ethical Standards (BACB) and
b. The Guidelines for Responsible Conduct for Behavior Analysts (BACB
Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior Analysts (AKA: The “Code”)
The code has 2 Parts:
- 10 Sections: These are relevant to professional and ethical behavior of behavior analysts.
- Glossary
Defined by the BACB as “ a paraprofessional who practices under the close, ongoing supervision of a BCBA, BCaBA, or FL-CBA (Florida Certified Behavior Analysts)”.
- Main responsibility: the direct implementation of behavior-analytic services.
- The _____ does NOT design interventions or assessment plans.
- To attain the ____ Credential, you must complete 40 hours of training, pass the ____ Competency Assessment, pass the ____ examination, and more as described on the BACB website.
Registered Behavior Technician (RBT)
________ are considered to be already meeting the standards of the BCaBA an RBT.
BCBA