Episode 333 - Risk Assessment w. Dr. Stephanie Peterson, Dr. Rebecca Eldridge, + Dr. Neil Deochand

ABA Inside Track

Robert Parry-Cruwys

Social Sciences, Science, Education

4.7 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While completing a functional behavior assessment is an ethical requirement before engaging in behavior change programming, only a minority of BCBAs consistently do this. And since many of the barriers to completing FAs revolve around seemingly insurmountable (and ethical concern of) risks to clicents, wouldn't having a more structured way to assess the risk of an FA and more quickly review mitigating factors provide a potential solution to these problems? Well, that's exactly what Dr. Stephanie Peterson and her former students Dr. Rebecca Eldridge and Dr. Neil Deochand thought when they developed their Functional Analysis Risk Assessment Decision Tool. This week, as voted on by our Patrons, how to complete a risk assessment before starting your functional analysis from the people at the forefront of this research.

This episode is available for 1.0 ETHICS CEU.

Patrons at the $5 and up levels can get that CEU for FREE! Just head on over to our Patreon Page.

Articles discussed this episode:

Wiskirchen, R.R., Deochand, N., & Peterson, S.M. (2017). Functional analysis: A need for clinical decision support tools to weight risks and benefits. Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice, 17, 325-333. doi: 10.1037/bar0000088

Deochand, N., Eldridge, R.R., & Peterson, S.M. (2020). Toward the development of a functional analysis risk assessment decision tool. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 13, 978-990. doi: 10.1007/s40617-020-00433-y

Schroeder, A.C., Peterson, S.M., Mahabub, M.B., & Dresch, M.K. (2025). A pilot evaluation of expert and novice use of the functional analysis risk assessment decision tool. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 18, 811-825. doi: 10.1007/s40617-020-00433-y

If you're interested in ordering CEs for listening to this episode, click here to go to the store page. You'll need to enter your name, BCBA #, and the two episode secret code words to complete the purchase. Email us at abainsidetrack@gmail.com for further assistance.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. Welcome to ABA Inside Track, the podcast that's like reading in your car, but safer. I'm your host, Robert Perry
0:21.2	Cruz, and with me as always are my fabulous co-hosts. Hey there, Rob, it's me, Jackie, not Perry
0:27.1	Cruz McDonald. Is that your legal middle name? I can't believe your parents thought so far ahead.
0:32.9	I changed it actually in adulthood. Oh, okay. It's your professional name. That's good.
0:39.6	And it's me. Hello, it's Diana Perry Cruz. Oh, boy. Well, everyone, usually I do a little joke, but I'm not in a joking mood
0:45.4	today. I just want to get into a talk about behavior analysis and behavior analytic research,
0:49.8	which we do every week on this podcast related to some topic and some research. But I was, the other day,
0:56.1	was thinking about a topic. So I was reading a paper and they mentioned, hey, you should be doing a risk
1:00.9	assessment. And I said, yeah, yeah, I know what a risk assessment is. And then I thought about
1:05.7	I said, but do I really know what a risk assessment is? And then I thought to myself, how many papers
1:10.3	have talked about cost benefit analysis and risk assessment? And then they sort of like, dot, dot, dot,
1:16.5	they trail off. And I think nobody knows what they're talking about when they talk about doing a
1:20.7	risk assessment. So I did what I like to do, which is I looked at some research. And fortunately,
1:26.5	we had some listeners who said, I want to hear
1:29.4	more about that research. And we got super lucky in that there, A, is research on the topic. And B,
1:36.5	there are three people who want to talk about that research and tell me if I just should have
1:42.1	learned what a risk assessment is better or whether it is something that hasn't been defined as well as it should have been all these years, and thankfully, they're going to put a stop to that problem. So we're talking all about risk assessments. Specifically, we're going to talk about the, we'll have to talk about how to pronounce this, but the far, the ferret. The ferret. The ferret assessment. The ferret assessment. And,
2:03.6	you know, acronym aside, we've got three great guests on who are going to talk all about this.
2:08.2	We have Dr. Stephanie Peterson. We have Dr. Becky Eldridge and we have Dr. Neil Diochand,
2:13.6	all here to talk about risk assessment. Thanks to our listeners, and then thanks to them for being here.
2:19.2	So thank you all so much for coming here and pointing me in the right direction.
2:24.5	Safety and number.
	...

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