Dr. Cynthia Anderson Co-authors Article in Behavior Analysis in Practice

Cynthia Anderson, Ph.D., BCBA-D, Senior Vice President of Applied Behavior Analysis for May Institute, and Director of the National Autism Center, co-authored an article published in Behavior Analysis in Practice (BAP) titled, “Casting a Wider Net: an Analysis of Scholarly Contributions of Behavior Analysis Graduate Program Faculty.” Her co-authors were Christina Alligood and Heather McGee.

BAP is a peer-reviewed translational publication of the Association for Behavior Analysts International (ABAI) designed to provide science-based, best-practice information relevant to service delivery in behavior analysis.

For prospective students considering training in behavior analysis, there are now many different programs available. In this article, Dr. Anderson and her co-authors argue that students should consider several different indicators of program quality, one of which is the scholarly contributions of faculty. The authors identify other variables that prospective students might consider when evaluating different training programs and make suggestions for the field and for future research in this area.

Authors’ Abstract
As interest in careers in behavior analysis has grown, there has been a concomitant increase in the number of training programs providing coursework in behavior analysis. There is a growing need for indices of quality of these programs, with some authors recently suggesting that faculty research productivity might serve as one indicator of program quality. We continue this conversation, taking a broad view of faculty scholarly contributions by conducting a search of all articles authored by instructors in graduate-level Behavior Analyst Certification Board verified course sequences (VCSs) and published from 2000 to 2015 in peer-reviewed journals indexed by the PsycINFO database. The resulting list includes 8,906 publication records in 715 journals, authored by 1,232 instructors from 224 programs. Our analysis suggests that graduate-level VCS instructors have published in a broad array of journals and topic areas. We discuss implications of these data for prospective students’ evaluations of program quality and fit.

[Read Dr. Anderson’s bio.]