Ethics for Behavior Analysts

Ethical dilemmas surface frequently in educational and clinical practice. Consider these situations:

• A person residing in a private, rural, for-profit community-based home for persons with developmental disabilities approaches the director and states that he wants to move to an apartment in a nearby town. Such a move would represent a loss of income to the agency, might generate additional transition costs (e.g., moving expenses, future on-site supervision), and has the potential to be dangerous to the resident given the area of town that the person could afford. How could the director respond ethically to the resident’s inquiry about moving without being biased by a conflict of interest?

• Julian, a student with severe disabilities, engages in frequent and severe self-injurious behavior (SIB) (e.g., head banging, eye gouging). Many positive and positive-reductive approaches have been attempted to reduce his SIB, but none have been successful. The support coordinator recommends the Self-Injurious Behavior Inhibition System (SIBIS) as an option, but the parents object because they fear that electrical shock will hurt their son. Given that documented positive attempts have failed, is it an appropriate ethical course of action to recommend that SIBIS treatment be initiated?

• During the course of an annual individualized education program (IEP) meeting, Ms. Dougherty, a first-year teacher, perceives that a school district administrator is trying to “steer” the parents of a student with emotional disabilities into accepting a revised IEP without the provision of school-based applied behavior analysis services recommended by the majority of other team members. Ms. Dougherty hypothesizes that the administrator’s position is based on the added costs the financially strapped school district would bear if it provided these services. As a first-year teacher, Ms. Dougherty is concerned that if she speaks up, she might lose the favor of her principal and maybe her job. If she remains silent, the student might not receive needed services. How might Ms. Dougherty serve as an advocate for the student, but not lose her position on the faculty? Given each of these situations, how is the behavior analyst to respond ethically?