The Six Rules and Guidelines for Count and Rate Flashcards
What are the six guidelines that will help researchers and practitioners obtain, describe, and interpret count and
rate data most appropriately?
- Reference Counting Time
- Calculate Correct and Incorrect Rates of Response When Assessing Skill Development
- Consider the Varied Complexity of Responses
- Use rate to measure free operants
- Do not use rate to measure behaviors that occur within discrete trials.
- Do not use rate to measure continuous behaviors that occur for extended periods
What two methods are used to calculate rate of response?
Total observation time and total IRT
Why do you reference the counting time?
Comparing rate
measures without reference to the counting time can lead to
faulty interpretations of data
What is an example of counting time not being referenced leading to faulty interpretation?
Running 1 mile at a rate of 7 minutes per mile is a different class of behavior than running a marathon
Why do you calculate Correct and Incorrect Rates of Response When
Assessing Skill Development
Correct and
incorrect rate measures together provide important information
to help the teacher evaluate how well the student is progressing, enables assessment of proportional accuracy, and enables assessment of fluency.
Why do you consider the varied complexity of responses?
Many important behaviors
are composites of two or more component behaviors, and different situations call for varied sequences or combinations of the
component behaviors
What is an example of considering the varied complexity of responding?
Helwig (1973) used the number of operations needed to produce the
answers to mathematics problems to calculate response rates
Why do you use rate to measure free operants?
Rate of response is a preferred measurement for free operants because it is sensitive to changes in behavior values and because it offers clarity and precision by defining a count per unit of time.
What is a free operant?
behaviors that 1. have discrete
onsets and offsets 2. do not depend on discriminative stimuli,
3. involves minimal displacement of the organism in time and space 4. emitted over a wide range of response rates (HDIE)
Why do you not use rate to measure behaviors that occur with discrete trials?
because behaviors that occur within discrete trials are opportunity bound, percentage of response opportunities or trials-to-criterion should be used.
Why do you not use rate to measure continuous behaviors that occur for extended periods?
Duration or interval recording are the best measures for continuous behaviors in “on” and “off” type of recording,
