When I ask people what they want to learn more about, the number one thing requested is negative behavior and I totally understand why. Negative behavior has a huge impact in our classrooms. How can you teach the ladybug life cycle when you have these intensive behaviors occurring? If you are nodding your head, this is a blog post for you.
Whenever I faced these scenarios, I always turned to ABC data sheets. I get it, ABC data sheets seem overwhelming. Does it seem daunting to set up? Do you feel like you won’t have time to collect the data throughout the day? Once you have the data, are you worried you wont know how to analyze it? Don’t worry! ABC data sheets are not as intense as they seem and they are super helpful!
To start off, let’s review what ABC is. ABC stands for antecedent, behavior consequence. To clarify, consequence is not negative. Consequence is just whatever occurs after the behavior. Let’s apply this to an example.
Everyday, when I collect my bag and my keys, my dog Buster walks to his treat jaw to indicate that he wants a treat. The antecedent is me getting ready for work. The behavior is Buster asking for treat. The consequence is whatever I do next. If I say not today and tell him he is a good boy, that’s a consequence. If I give him a treat, that’s a consequence.
Sometimes we find that our consequences might be maintaining the behavior. Going back to the Buster example, my consequence does maintain his behavior. I always give him a treat, and when I give him a treat I’ve taught him to keep asking for treats. When we take ABC data
we can see all of the consequences and see if any are maintaining the behavior.
It’s also important to figure out the function of the behavior. Let’s say every time you give a writing task, one of your students rips up the paper and throws his pencil across the room. You might think it is task avoidance. You might assume that writing is an un-preffered tasks and it might be difficult. You might work with your Occupational Therapist to put interventions in place to help.
That sounds great, but what if the function was an attention seeking behavior? What if he wanted to interact with you and he discovered that ripping his paper and throwing his pencil was an effective way to get your attention. If that is the case, then the interventions are not targeting the behavior so they won’t be effective.
ABC data sheets help us determine the function of the behavior and the consequences maintaining the behavior. It also helps analyze what is actually happening in your classrooom.
When you go back through your data sheets, it will help you look through the data and find patterns. If you take 40 data points and you see that 30 times the behavior happened during whole group, that means there could be something there to tweak. On the flip side, you might think that property destruction is a significant but in 40 data points if you only see it twice, it might not be the most significant behavior. The data sheet just helps you get a more clear picture of is happening when you go to work on your FBA.
I hope this blog helped you understand the purpose of ABC data. If you need more support, this blog post will walk you through a data sheet and this podcast will help you feel more confident using ABC data in your classroom!