ABA Exam Coach

F.5: Design and evaluate descriptive assessments.

Free practice questions for this part of the BCBA, with an explanation for every option.

Which of the following is an example of a descriptive functional behavior assessment?
  1. A. Interviewing the parent with a structured FBA interview
    An interview depends on informant report, so it is indirect.
  2. B. Recording antecedents, behavior, and consequences as they naturally happen in the classroom
    Correct. A descriptive assessment means directly observing behavior and the events around it in the natural setting without changing anything.
  3. C. Testing attention, demand, alone, and play conditions in an analog setting
    Changing conditions systematically is a functional analysis.
  4. D. Having the teacher complete the Questions About Behavioral Function (QABF) rating scale
    A rating scale filled out by an informant is an indirect assessment.
A scatterplot of a student's property destruction shows that most incidents happen between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. on school days. What is the best next step?
  1. A. Conclude the behavior is escape-maintained
    A scatterplot shows when behavior happens, not why it happens.
  2. B. Look at what activities, people, and conditions are present during that period to form hypotheses
    Correct. Scatterplots point to times worth examining more closely, for example with ABC recording, to find relevant variables.
  3. C. Stop data collection, since the pattern has been found
    Finding a time pattern is only the start of the assessment, so data collection should continue.
  4. D. Move the student to a different classroom for that hour
    Changing the student's environment before knowing the function is premature.
A BCBA records 40 instances of a client's screaming. Thirty of them were followed by staff removing a task. What is the conditional probability of task removal given screaming?
  1. A. 0.25
    0.25 is the proportion of screaming instances that were NOT followed by task removal (10 out of 40).
  2. B. 0.30
    0.30 comes from mistaking the count of 30 for a proportion.
  3. C. 1.33
    1.33 comes from dividing in the wrong direction (40/30). A probability cannot be greater than 1.
  4. D. 0.75
    Correct. 30 divided by 40 gives 0.75.

Take the free diagnostic