Self-injurious behavior and functional analysis: where are the descriptions of participant protections?

This study examined the reporting of participant protections in studies involving functional analysis and self-injurious behavior and published from 1994 through 2008. Results indicated that session termination criteria were rarely reported and other specific participant safeguards were seldom described. The absence of such information in no way indicates that functional analysis procedures were unethical or otherwise inappropriate, although the fact that participants emitted many self-injurious responses in some studies where no protections were described and no rationale for requiring such a large sample of behavior was provided is cause for concern. Future publications would benefit from the inclusion of clear and detailed specifications of participant protections.