The Development of a Calculator for Objectively Evaluating Supervisory Behaviors in Practice

Supervision has been a popular topic of study by behavior analysts for the last decade. This popularity came about after several hallmark articles were published and key events in our profession enhanced clarity regarding how much impact supervision can have on important variables such as the quality of behavior-analytic service delivery, patient outcomes, staff satisfaction, and level of staff burnout. Despite the increase in the volume of supervision literature, few articles have provided concrete recommendations for how to objectively evaluate supervisory behaviors in practice. In this tutorial, we share how we developed a supervision assessment calculator and tested its efficacy to evaluate supervisory behaviors in our practice. We tested the calculator with mock videos, and compared scores from independent raters to determine if the calculator could be used reliability in practice. We make recommendations for behavior analysts who wish to create objective scoring criteria for supervision in their own practice, and ways in which resources like this can be used to enhance the quality of supervision.