Interpreting Data for Referral, Goals, and Service Decisions
Key Takeaways
- Assessment interpretation should connect data to referral, service level, goal priority, and intervention planning.
- Goals should be socially significant, client-informed, culturally responsive, observable, and measurable.
- Referral is appropriate when data suggest needs outside the BCBA's competence or behavior-analytic scope.
- Prioritization weighs risk, client values, habilitative benefit, feasibility, and likely impact.
Interpreting Assessment Data
After records review, interviews, skill assessment, preference assessment, descriptive assessment, or functional analysis, the BCBA must decide what the data mean for service. Interpretation should stay within the strength of the evidence.
If data show a clear skill deficit, select an acquisition goal. If data show behavior occurs mainly during escape from difficult tasks, select function-based replacement and context goals. If data show possible medical, psychiatric, sensory, speech, or legal needs outside scope, refer or collaborate.
Goal Priority Matrix
| Priority factor | High-priority cue |
|---|---|
| Safety | Risk of injury, elopement, health, or severe disruption |
| Social significance | Client and stakeholders value the outcome |
| Function | Goal addresses maintaining variables or replacement behavior |
| Habilitation | Skill increases independence, access, or dignity |
| Feasibility | Team can implement and measure with integrity |
| Culture and context | Goal fits routines, values, language, and setting demands |
Write From Data
A goal should include the learner, behavior, condition, criterion, and relevant context. It should not be a personality outcome such as "will be respectful." It should describe what the client will do and why the target is justified by assessment.
Service and Referral Decisions
Assessment may show that ABA services are indicated, that a different service is needed first, or that collaboration is required. For example, a communication assessment may support referral to speech-language services while the BCBA targets functional communication in daily routines.
Exam items often include a tempting goal that is easy for staff but weakly related to the referral concern. Choose the goal that follows from assessment data and improves client welfare, not the one that merely suppresses behavior or satisfies a setting's preference.
Assessment shows that a client's aggression occurs most often when requests are denied and that the client has no reliable way to request delayed access or choose alternatives. Which goal is most defensible?
A behavior assessment suggests that episodes of crying and withdrawal are related to panic symptoms reported by the client. The BCBA has no competence in diagnosing or treating anxiety disorders. What should the BCBA do?
Which goal best reflects assessment-to-goal decision making?