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on the Dissemination of Behavioral Technology
Richard W. Malott1
Behavior Analysis Program
Department of Psychology
Western Michigan University
Note: This article originally appeared in the Japanese Journal of Behavior
Analysis
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The
Problem: Behavior Analysis Has Too Little Impact
A concern about dissemination of behavioral technology results from
a concern about the limited impact of behavior analysis. Before looking
at the impact of behavior analysis on the world of action, let us
first look at its impact on the world of ideas, if you will pardon
my dualism. It would be of interest to get a historical perspective
on how much impact behavior analysis has had. In doing so, we should
keep in mind its recent emergence, its small number of participants,
and the small amount of resources that have been devoted to it. Are
we behind, ahead of, or at the same level as other disciplines at
a comparable stage of their development? For example, how do we compare
to 19th century medical science? And how does the impact of Skinner’s Behavior of Organisms compare to Darwin’s Evolution
of Species, at a comparable number of years after its publication,
and why? I have no answers to these questions and raise them in the
hopes that someone else may. However, we might get an indication of
the absolute intellectual impact of behavior analysis (Laties &
Mace, 1993). In 1992, the paid circulation for seven of the leading
behavioral journal was 17,081. Furthermore, as of 1986, there were
over 40 applied behavioral journals (Barlow, 1993). This good news
is slightly tempered by the reality that there is considerable duplication
in subscriptions among the seven journals, and a fair amount of the
work is more behavior-therapy oriented than Skinnerian behavior analytic.
We can also get a relative measure of the intellectual impact of behavior
analysis. Compare the 1992 subscription of the Journal of Applied
Behavior Analysis (JABA) (4,636) with two of the highest subscription
applied journals that do not specialize in behavior-analytic research,
though they may publish some behavior-analytic articles: the American
Journal on Mental Retardation (AJMR) (11,600) and the American Psychological
Association’s Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
(JCCP) (10,488). Also, JABA’s impact can be measured in terms
of the number and relative frequency of citations to its articles.
In 1982, there was a total of 1,486 measured references to JABA articles
and an average of 1.39 references per JABA article published in the
two previous years. This contrasts favorably with 1,310 and .89 for
AMJR and somewhat less favorably with 5,898 and 2.01 for JCCP. So
in the world of scholarly research, it appears that behavior analysis
plays a major, though not dominant role. What contribution has behavior
analysis made to applied setting? Against the reasonably optimistic
picture of the impact of behavior analysis on the scholarly world,
we might compare ABA’s 2,500 members (R. Schnarrs, personal
communication, December 4, 1995) with the American Psychological Association’s
132,000 members (G. Whitaker, personal communication, December 5,
1995), the great majority of whom are non-behavior-analytic practitioners.
Or, as Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1987) put it, behavior analysis constitutes
a stable 2% of American psychology. This may indicate the much smaller
impact behavior analysis has on the practitioner’s world. The
contrast would be worse if we were to compare the number of social
workers, corrections workers, gerontologists, teachers, rehabilitation
workers, substance-abuse workers, and business management consultants
belonging to ABA versus those belonging to the corresponding traditional
professional organizations. Furthermore the majority of our applied
work is concentrated in one important but relatively small field.
Fifty-eight percent of the research articles published in a sample
of four recent issues of JABA dealt with developmental disabilities.
While developmental disabilities is an important problem, surely the
rest of the world’s problems deserve more than 42% of our experimental
efforts. Furthermore, the imbalance in the percentage of articles
devoted to developmental disabilities has increased rather than decreased
throughout the history of JABA, although only 1% of our population
has been classified as developmentally disabled (Northup, Vollmer,
& Serrett, 1993). Laties and Mace (1993) suggest that behavior
analysis has made contributions to other psychological services and
to education. Behavior analysis has contributed procedures such as
differential social reinforcement, token economies, prompt hierarchies,
self-management, effective and nonintrusive forms of time-out, and
functional analysis; and behavior analysis is now making preliminary
contributions to road safety, community interventions, sports and
exercise, social competence, and business and industry. But our technology
has yet to be well disseminated in these other fields.
Causes
of the Problem
To disseminate behavior analysis more widely, we need more behavior
analysts to do the disseminating. There are not enough of us; Skinner’s
“happy few” is too few. But attrition as well as under
production is a major reason there are too few behavior analysts.
Many, perhaps most, of the few of us who are trained as behavior analysts
stop practicing behavior analysis soon after graduation from the university,
especially those behaviorally trained alumni who work outside the
university.
To appreciate the attrition from the ranks of behavior analysis, consider
these data: About 50% of the attendees at the annual conference of
the Association for Behavior Analysis are student members. For over
the 23 years ABA and its earlier incarnation have held an annual meeting;
and during that time, the attendance has risen from about 900 to 1,750.
Let us assume that the students attend the convention for two years
before graduating. If we had no attrition of student members, the
number of attendees would now be around 15,400 instead of 1,750. A
large percentage of the 13,650-member loss consists of alumni who
graduated from the university and entered the world of the practitioner.
Often, to graduate is to leave a set of social contingencies that
support behavior analysis and to enter a set of social contingencies
that often either extinguish or punish behavior analysis. Those who
do have to make a living based on what they disseminate often find
it expedient to do so in terms of the current fad, for example conducting
wilderness-adventure bonding experiences for executives rather than
using behavior analysis to facilitate the application of behavior
analysis. And contrary to what we might hope, the small though cumulatively
significant, practical consequences of performing behavior analysis
will not support such a performance.
Part of the problem is that behavior-analytic candidates are not available
when behavior-analytic jobs become available and vice versa. And part
of the problem is that there are just not enough of either behavior-analytic
jobs or behavior analysts. That may explain much of the attrition
of alumni membership in ABA. Most alumni become employed in jobs that
do not support behavior-analysis, and the behavioral community does
not do an adequate job of maintaining the behavioral engagement of
our alumni in such positions. In summary, there are too few behavior
analysis jobs and too few behavior analysts to fill those jobs. Not
enough organizations are effectively using behavior analysis. This
is because not enough organizations are hiring behavior analysts,
which, in turn, is because those organizations are not looking for
behavior analysts to hire, and because there are not enough behavior
analysts to hire when the organizations are looking. But there may
also be another problem. Behavior analysts may not be sufficiently
effective in encouraging others to use behavioral technology; thus
they fail to further the dissemination of behavior analysis.
Analysis
Rule-Governed
Behavior, or Id Control vs. Ego Control
As Shimamune (1996) points out, we should not confuse the indirect-acting
rule-governed analog contingencies of complex, verbal, human “decision
making” with the simple, direct-acting contingencies of the
rat in the Skinner box. However, such direct-acting contingencies
do form the basis of all human behavior. In other words, the outcomes
of the adoption of a particular technology are almost always much
too delayed to reinforce or punish such an adoption; so it is metaphorical,
at best, to extrapolate from the few seconds delay ff reinforcement
in matching-law research to the days, weeks, months, and years delay
between the adoption of behavioral technology and the reinforcers
that technology might eventually produce. But not only must we avoid
over simplification that plagues much of behavior analysis, we behavior
analysts must also be wary of the seductive attractiveness of the
rationality implicit in cognitive psychology. In other words, just
because a potential adopter tacts all sorts of characteristics of
the technology, Freud may be right in that many of those tacts might
be no more than decorative rationalization; and the variables really
controlling the adopters behavior may be the smiles and frowns of
the technology disseminator. I am not suggesting that human beings
are incapable of rational decision, just that such rational decision
may be more rare than we assume. Furthermore, most of the potential
adopter’s statements or tacts describing the technology under
consideration may be intraverbals devoid of contact with the actual
technology itself. So our analyses must delicately balance the potential
control by indirect-acting verbal rules and the direct-acting contingencies
of social reinforcement and punishment – Freud’s constant
battle between ego contingencies and id contingencies.
Commitment
vs. Adherence
In considering the diffusion of behavioral technology, we tend to
make the error of concentrating on commitment and ignoring adherence.
While this is a special problem for cognitivists, behaviorists also
make this mistake. With a rational model of human behavior, the cognitivists
usually overlook the crucial distinction of commitment vs. adherence.
Thus they are constantly being surprised to find that rationally agreeing
to a particular course of action often fails to result in following
that course of action; agreeing to a diet and adhering to a diet are
two different behaviors. Though fortunately for the Japanese readers,
this example may be more relevant to the American culture than the
Japanese culture. Generally we will adhere to our commitments, to
the extent that each instance of such adherence results in a probable
and sizeable outcome. But failing to follow a weight-reduction diet
for just one dish of ice-cream will have an infinitesimally small
impact on our waistline, though the repetition of such failures has
a cumulatively significant effect on more than our waistline. Similarly,
an individual instance of adherence to the implementation of most
behavioral technologies results in only an infinitesimally small beneficial
outcome. For example, a single instance of a grade-school teacher’s
reinforcing a child’s appropriate behavior will have a negligible
impact on that child’s behavior; but the consistent reinforcement
of appropriate behavior can have the cumulative result of changing
an academic failure into an academic success. But because of the poor
control generated by rules describing small, though cumulatively significant
outcomes, most school teachers fail to adhere to behavioral technology
in their classroom though they may have left the college classroom
firmly committed to that technology.
Solutions
From the perspective of a goal-directed systems design, university
teachers of behavior analysis can contribute greatly to the goal of
increasing the impact of B.F. Skinner in the 21st century. There are
several ways they might make such a contribution. Perhaps students
can learn more about effective technology diffusion by studying the
behavior of the used car salesperson and reading Dale Carnegie’s
(1982) How to Win Friends and Influence People than we can by studying
mathematical models of decision making. For example, after he retired
from Columbia University, Fred Keller disseminated throughout Latin
America his personalized systems of instruction, a behavioral-inspired
instructional technology; in the process he also disseminated behavior
analysis in general throughout the contingent. In my view, his secret
is that he was so lovable that everyone wanted him for a grandfather;
and he had an effective way of nodding his head in profound , thoughtful
agreement as you speak; who could resist offending such a wonderful
person by failing to adopt the technology that person advocated. Similarly,
after he retired from the University of Illinois, Sidney Bijou has
effectively dedicated much of his time to the international dissemination
of behavior analysis, simply by concentrating on it, going where ever
he is invited, and being supportive. University teachers can accomplish
the sub-goal of facilitating the dissemination of behavior-analytic
technology through the accomplishment of a lower-level sub-goal –
ensuring that well-trained behavior analysts are in positions to make
widespread use of behavior analysis. They contribute to that sub-goal,
in turn, by producing a large number of well-trained behavior analysts.
But the data on retention in ABA suggests that merely producing a
large number of behavior analysis alumni is not sufficient. We must
spend as much of our effort supporting their continued use of behavior
analysis, once our students graduate. Teachers of behavior analysis
might also encourage on alternative to the traditional model of behavior
analyst as consultant. The behavior analysis consultant attempts to
persuade directors and managers of human service, educational, and
business organizations to adopt and maintain behavioral technology,
often a difficult or impossible goal. An alternative is for behavior
analysts to become directors and managers in such organizations, divisions,
departments, wards, etc. Then they themselves can adopt and maintain
the behavioral technology they haven been trained to use. Although
the behavior-analyst-as-manager model may decrease the problems of
technology dissemination, it does not eliminate them. And the problem
still remains of ensuring that our alumni end up in such managerial
approaches. In dealing with adherence, once commitment is obtained,
it is almost always essential to establish an effective performance-management
system – one that will maintain adherence to an accepted behavioral
technology. Behavior analysts are almost as likely to maintain adherence
as are cognitivists.
Behavioralizing
the Culture
Some have argued we should disseminate behavioral technology by behavioralizing
the culture. An example would be formally teaching behavior analysis
at the preschool through high school level, as well as at the university
level, as a part of the student’s liberal education in the natural
and social sciences. Along the same line, behavior analysts periodically
suggest that we should infiltrate the popular media such as movies,
TV shows, and newspaper columns with behavior analytic themes. While
all these efforts to behavioralize the culture might be of value,
their impact may be too diffuse and their implementation too expensive
to be cost effective. For example, my observation is that without
an effective maintenance system, an entire course in behavior analysis,
no matter how effective and well received by the student, will have
little lasting effect on the student, if the student does not end
up in an environment that explicitly supports the use of behavior
analysis. (This is just another example of the commitment vs. adherence
dichotomy.) Of course, if teaching behavior analysis in high school
were followed by an effective channeling of the students into a behavior-analytic
university program, the cost effectiveness of the high-school course
would greatly increase.
Perhaps we can be more successful by addressing specific technological
issues for specific audiences, rather than trying to behavioralize
the culture. I find little resistance to behavior analysis as a technology
in my undergraduate principles of behavior course and little need
to behavioralize my student to prepare them for such an acceptance
of the behavioral technology. But I find much more resistance to behavior
analysis as a world view in a follow up course; for example, few students
are able to accept the implications of behavior analysis for freewill,
awareness, religion, intelligence, or sexual values.
Research
and Development
Shimamune (1996) suggests that research and development in the area
of technology dissemination may be too long range to produce an adequate
frequency of publication to ensure the academic survival of the researcher
(see Hopkins, 1987, for a similar view of constraints on long-term
research). I think the secret may be to publish in professional journals
signs of accomplishment as the project progresses toward its long-range
goals. If scholars are sufficiently research and publication oriented,
they can both develop a long-range technology and publish along the
way, though it is not easy. An example would be the researchers who
developed the Achievement Place model (Fixsen & Blase, 1993);
they have generated many publications as well as disseminated their
technology. Furthermore, small scale efforts at dissemination research
might not be excessively long. For example we academicians might do
research on dissemination of our behavioral technology to our undergraduate
students to use in their every day lives, technology like self-management
techniques, performance contracting, and effective study techniques.
From the individual level of dissemination, we might go to a small-scale
organizational level, such as student organizations within the university.
Similarly, many of our students especially our graduate students work
in organizational settings, whether clinical, educational, or business.
These students might attempt small dissemination projects in their
own settings. And, of course, the university, itself, is an organization
notoriously resistant to innovation, especially of a behavioral nature,
an organization that would provide a stringent test site of any of
our theories and techniques related to the dissemination of technology,
theory, philosophy, or even of fact. Most of us who teach behavior
analysis to undergraduates work daily in a natural laboratory begging
for a systematic effort at the diffusion of technology, science, and
philosophy. Rather than blaming the student (the victim) for failing
to appreciate the technological, philosophical, intellectual, and
spiritual power of behavior analysis, we should systematically analyze
the variables controlling our student’s commitment and adherence
to behavior analysis in all of its many ramifications. Then we might
gradually expand from our classroom. First we could move to other
classrooms and organizations within the university, to those organizations
outside the university our students have ready access to; and as we
acquire an increasingly effective technology of dissemination, we
can expand our efforts to include organizations and populations of
greater and greater impact on our culture in general. All easier said
than done, but I have accomplished nothing worthwhile in my life that
I would have been willing to undertake had I appreciated, at the beginning,
how difficult it would be ultimately. So it is best that we not be
too honest about the anticipated difficulties of undertaking any new
project; could that mild deception be the first step in the dissemination
of behavioral technology? More generally, we might develop the dissemination
technology that Shimamune (1996) advocates by performing a number
of case studies. In those case studies, we could follow the process
he recommends and document our successes and failures, modifying his
recommendations as we do so. Then we should provide our graduate students
with practicum training in implementing technology diffusion on a
small scale, in an individual institution, department, or classroom,
or ward within that institution. These small scale replications might
even be a good place to start in the empirical research and development
of Shimamune dissemination technology. Perhaps university teachers
could add dissemination to the requirements of acceptable dissertations
and articles. This addition might seem like an unnecessary cruelty,
but perhaps the initial scope of applied behavior analysis dissertations
might be decreased to make dissemination more manageable within a
reasonable time frame. Then it would not suffice merely to demonstrate
that a particular example of behavioral technology works; it would
also be necessary to demonstrate that the technology works in the
hands of the end user, that the end user is likely to adopt it, and
that the end user is likely to continue using it (a relevant variable
would probably be ease of use by the novice and the expert). Such
requirements placed in the already strict requirements for publication
in behavior analysis journals might also facilitate dissemination.
Alternatively, these journals might actively encourage the follow
up publication of usability and dissemination data as a means of encouraging
such research and development efforts.
Conclusions
To supplement the points Shimamune (1996) has made, we should further
consider the following issues: the extent of the contributions of
behavior analysis at a philosophical, theoretical, and practical level.
The maintenance of trained behavior analysts. The placement of trained
behavior analysts. The training of more behavior analysts. The failure
to appreciate the importance of rule-governed behavior in the adoption
of behavioral technology. The irrelevance of rationality to the adoption
of behavioral technology. The distinction between commitment and adherence.
The impact of the consultant role vs. the managerial role. The impact
of behavioralizing the culture vs. popularizing specific behavioral
technologies. Whether we should use a traditional experimental analysis
model or an extended case study model in doing research on and development
of a behavioral technology for the dissemination of behavior technology.
References
Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M., & Risley, T. R. (1987). Some still-current
dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior
Analysis, 20, 313 – 327.
Barlow, D. H. (1993). Foundation and Empire. Journal of Applied Behavior
Analysis, 26, 527 – 537.
Carnegie, D. (1982). How to win friends and influence people (Rev.
ed.). New York: Pocket Books.
Fixsen, D.L., & Blase, K. A. (1993). Creating new realities: Program
development and dissemination. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
26, 597 – 615.
Hopkins, B. L. (1987). Comments on the futures of applied behavior
analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20, 339 – 346.
Laties, V. G., & Mace, F. C. (1993). Taking Stock: The first 25
years of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Journal of Applied
Behavior Analysis, 26, 513 – 525.
Northup, J., Vollmer, T. R., Serrett, K. (1993). Publication trends
in the 25 years of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Journal
of Applied Behavior Analysis, 26, 527 – 537.
Shimamune, S. (1996). Dissemination of behavioral technologies: Demand
for research and practice. Japanese Journal of Behavior Analysis,
10, 46 – 57.
