The ABA & OT Podcast #17: You Can‘t Improve What You Can‘t Measure

Taking data vastly improves the performance of both students and teachers alike. ABAs and OTs can determine the best course of action for increasing or reducing behaviors with data to back them up, while students also feel more motivated with their increased awareness. 

Discussed today are the practical reasons for taking data, specific steps you can take to start taking data, and the common barriers to taking good data. Data collection goals between ABAs and OTs may also be different, so Mandy and Aditi break down how they view these goals and how they can achieve them.   

HIGHLIGHTS

03:24 Shoutout to CentralReach Institute

04:20 Evidence-based interventions and why ABAs take so much data

08:49 OT barriers to data collection

11:23 How to begin collecting data 

15:30 OT data collection on goals and strategies to achieve that

25:48 Taking data increases motivation and improves performance  

28:30 Using standardized charts to measure fluency

35:13 Case study: Similarities and differences between ABA and OT goals

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. 

RHUMBA - How Relevant is it, How long, Understandable, Measurable, Behavioral, and Achievable

COAST - Client, Occupation, Assist Level, Specific, and Time-bound

SMART - Significant, Measurable, Achievable, Relates to the person, and Time-based

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

Aditi's Website

Progress Monitoring and Documentation During Virtual School-based OT Service Delivery via Telehealth

CentralReach Institute

Rick Kubina: Using Precision Measurement to Derive Meaningful Performance Metrics and Analytics

Reading with Precision (Precision Teaching Aims)

QUOTES

04:33 "Ethically, we are required and therefore obligated to demonstrate that our interventions are effective and evidence-based and it's absolutely impossible to do that without data."

13:29 "In order to measure something, you must define first what it is that you're teaching or a behavior that you're trying to increase or some behavior that you're trying to reduce."

23:00 "If you use a Standard Celeration chart and you apply how many opportunities the student performed in a period of time, it'll give you a really good trajectory of how long it's going to take to master that goal."

25:48 "The sheer act of taking data with a student improved their performance. I was like oh my gosh because they are so much more aware of their own performance."

29:59 "It's got a fixed X and Y axes and it's always the same. As opposed to what I call a stretch to fill chart where you can alter the X and Y axes to make your data look better than it really is and data on those types of charts are not comparable."