hi my name is May Beaubrun and I'm a board certified behavior analyst with Brett
DiNovi & associates in this video I'll be talking about continuous and
discontinuous measurement systems continuous measurement means that every
instance of a response are recorded during the observation session one
example is frequency to collect frequency data you should have the
operational definition of what an occurrence of the behavior is frequency
is the total times behavior occurs in a given observation session the
observation session should be the same intervals and this type of data
collection will be used in a free operant condition rate is the frequency
of the behavior over a specified period of time so that can be the number of
responses per minute per hour per day per week and so on observation sessions
can read different lengths since you're converting it into a rate the measure of
temporal dimensions of behavior measures how much time a behavior takes of one
example is latency latency measures how long a student takes to begin performing
a particular behavior to record latency data note when you give the student a
directive and when the student begins to respond an example would be responding
to requests making initiation to a person entering a room etc duration is a
measure of the total extent of time in which a behavior occurs it records how
long the behavior lasts and its use what effective behavior change concerns the
duration rather than the frequency or rate so for example running attending
reading and studying the time from our reinforcer to the next response is a
latency and not an inter response trial even if the reinforcer is response
produced in the response time is a measure of the number of response
opportunities needed to achieve a predetermined level of performance and
it's used as an indicator of the speed of learning measured trials two
criterion measures how long a student takes to begin performing a particular
behavior what the sort of requested some advantage to continuous measurement
system is that it provides an actual measure of behavior a point-to-point
correspondence between the behavior and the measure some disadvantage is that
they can be labor-intensive or even impossible given some practical
constraints this continuous measurement is a sample of how often behavior occurs
in a given observation this consider which measurement systems
are popular in both practice and an applied research in the mud fertile all
article the researchers found that about 45 percent of studies published in the
journal applied behavior analysis between 1995 and 2005 used discontinuous
measures of data collection let's discuss why there are three types of
discontinuous measurement systems partial an interval reporting whole
interval according and momentary time samples partial interval recording is a
time-saving method in which observer records whether the target behavior
occurred at any point during a specified interval data are presented as a
percentage of intervals in which target behaviors occurred an advantage is that
it provides a rough indication of both a rate and duration behavior a
disadvantage is that it generally overestimates sure occurrence and it can
be insensitive to large change and high rate behavior all of the most common
interval literature is 10 second partial interval recording it still tends to
overestimate actual behavior because of this practitioners should select utilize
partial interval recording for behaviors targeted for decrease rather than for
increase for example if 10 second partial interval data are collected on
NC behavior a behavior targeted for increase and the student is seated for
one second per interval using partial interval recording data would show that
the behavior remaining seeded happens for a hundred percent of intervals whole
interval recording is a time saving method in which observer Accords whether
the target behavior occurred throughout the interval data are presented as a
percentage of intervals in which target behaviors occurred an advantage that
provides a rough indication of duration of behavior a disadvantage is that it
generally underestimates occurrence of behavior it can be overly sensitive to
reduction in high rate behavior and insensitive to increase in low rate
behaviors it may be more appropriate to use whole interval recording for
behaviors targeted for increase but would require significant behavior
change in order to show an increase using the previous example a student
would need to go for remaining student for one second to ten seconds for one
interval to be scored momentary time.simple is a measurement method in
which the presence or absence of behaviors are recorded at precisely
specified time intervals data are presented
percentage of intervals and which target behaviors occurred some advantages are
that it's easy to implement not very time-consuming for the observer and more
accurate estimate of behavioral duration than partial interval according and
whole interval according some disadvantages or it may be subject to
random error in general momentary time sample has been shown to be the most
accurate discontinuous measurement system in the hanley a tall article they
found a less than 5% difference in behavioral estimates when intervals were
between five seconds and 120 seconds it is also recommended to measure behaviors
targeted for increase but it may be difficult to capture low rates of
behaviors so just to recap for continuous measurements it may be more
appropriate to use when you're measuring discreet behavior such as kicking for
discontinuous measurements it may be more appropriate when you're collecting
data on more ambiguous behaviors like vocal behavior that may have brief
responses between words very high rates of behavior when collecting data while
doing something else like teaching a class for multiple target behaviors and
when multiple target behaviors are being recorded at the same time for additional
resources review the Fisk and El Molino article as well as Villa Blanca article
they each feature a decision tree to help identify the best measurement type
in the Fisk and Emily no article there's a decision tree that proposes various
questions to help a clinician identify what the best type of data collection
system would be so for example there's questions such as behavior must increase
to near 100% or the behavior must decrease to near 0% and based on the
response whether it's yes or no the the most appropriate data collection system
can be identified whether that be partial interval according whole
interval according or a momentary time sample there are different cautions for
each one that the clinician could also use to guide it and form their decision
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