Question: What are your thoughts on the use of the term behavior analysis to describe our field?
Answer:
Personally, I have never liked the term behavior analysis. I have never been much interested in the topic, though I once did an ethogram looking at Grebe behavior. I am interested in the relation of the organism to its environment as measured by an investigator. In my case, my interest is in consequential (operant) and precedential (respondent) contingencies. Accordingly, I have always described what I do as contingency analysis, of which behavior is a part. I find audiences, including those who have never heard of our field, respond well to this, as the emphasis is on an understanding of their relation to the environment. When I speak to new audiences, I typically begin with a somewhat formal description of contingency. Then we begin to apply it to a range of issues. I found this resonates well with people and results in almost no resistance to the concepts. The emphasis switches from changing behavior, to understanding it and arranging the world to get better outcomes for individuals.
When I worked in the education field, when talking to school districts, I would introduce myself as a basic and applied learning scientist. Then we would talk about contingencies, both within instruction and within the school and classroom. Academic problems were treated as problems of contingencies, not of teachers, parents, or children. We did not have behavior or learning problems, we had problems in the arrangement of the environment. I once was offered the position of chief academic officer for one of the largest school districts in the country talking this way. (I told them there were too many early-morning meetings.)
For the over 30 years I did this, I never met with hostility nor resistance. Part of the reason, I believe, was that we always took a constructional approach and never advocated for, or attempted to decelerate or eliminate any behavior, that included learners, teachers, or administrators. We wanted to understand the alternative sets of contingencies which made the disturbing pattern sensible and adaptive. We always took the position that the consequences that maintain behavior should never be removed and simply be made available through other patterns at less cost, while still being available for the disturbing pattern.
We found that when one takes this approach, there is little resistance by newcomers, and they make an active effort to participate. I recently spoke to an important European Union governmental group with absolutely no background in our field, even the basic concept of reinforcement was somewhat foreign. By the end of the day, they were generating proposals to include contingency analysis into their work. They became excited about the science.