The ABA & OT Podcast #18: Why Percent Correct Is Not Good Enough? with Rick Kubina

Using percent correct has become the industry standard in behavior analysis. Dr. Rick Kubina, CentralReach’s Director of Research and Professor of Special Education at The Pennsylvania State University, joins the show today to shed light on a more objective way of looking at data using precision teaching. 

Though percent correct is useful in coming up with ratios, it is not always the best measure because of the ease with which the results can be manipulated. Precision teaching looks at the numbers objectively, uses visual charts that document the processes, and provides data-driven context to determine whether interventions are effective or not.

HIGHLIGHTS

02:42 Introduction to Rick Kubina

06:45 How percent correct became the industry standard

10:49 Why fewer ABA's actually practice precision teaching

18:38 When percent correct is the right way to measure

27:40 The resistance to precision teaching is rooted in human behavior

33:29 How to apply precision teaching charts to your discipline 

45:31 Information on Standard Celeration Charts you can download and use

50:29 How Standard Celeration Charts determine when a goal is mastered 

GLOSSARY

Dead Person Test - A test that says if a dead person cannot do it, then it is behavior, and if a dead person can do it, it is not behavior.

Dimensional quantity - Something that has dimensional counts or numbers that tell you its characteristics (height, weight, etc)

RESOURCES

Join our The ABA and OT Podcast Facebook Group to get access to the following resources:

Facebook group link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/397478901376425

EXTERNAL RESOURCES

Greatness Achieved Publishing Company

Reflections on Precision Teaching book by Rick Kubina

CentralReach Institute

Standard Celeration Society Facebook Group

The Databased OT Facebook Group

Aditi's Website

QUOTES

16:11 "Let's say, Aditi you are 20 out of 20, Mandy was 1 out of 1, and I was 7 out of 7. You know, we have a pretty big difference Mandy, myself, and you, but it's all going to be 100% correct."

23:06 "We in precision teaching have a measure that's called celeration and this measure tells us how fast is the behavior changing. And guess how we report that? We report it in percentage of weekly growth. So someone's behavior is doubling, we say that behavior has a hundred percent growth each week."

24:26 "Here's what I would suggest. Just don't convert it to percent. Just use the count. So in this instance, if you have a checklist, having your actual counts even if you don't time it, that's always going to be more informative than when you convert it."

26:37 "All of you OTs, the good news is just don't take the step where you convert it to percent and just work with the counts because they'll be more informative to you and you'll be able to understand at a deeper level how well is your client responding to whatever intervention you're applying."

47:24 "When you get someone who's been in a system, you're starting from ground zero. What a waste of time for you to figure out. Oh, I have to do this and this again. Whereas, if someone just showed you, here's all the things we tried, then you can try new things."

52:23 "Mastery should not be measured in terms of percentage. It should be measured in terms of the frequency that we talked about before."