Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 15, 2026

Operant Protocols for Assessing the Cost-benefit Analysis During Reinforced Decision Making by Rodents
Published on: September 10, 2018
How Behavior Analysts Make Ethical Decisions: A Qualitative Study
Elizabeth M Kelly1, Kaitlin Greeny1, Nancy E Rosenberg1
1College of Education, University of Washington, Haring Center, Box 357925, 1981 NE Columbia Road, Seattle, WA 98195 USA.
None:
Behavior analysts (BAs) frequently face professional ethical dilemmas. When faced with these dilemmas, BAs must problem solve and decide how to ethically respond. Though BAs have many tools available to guide their ethical decision making (e.g., Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts; Behavior Analyst Certification Board [BACB], 2020), little is known about how BAs make ethical decisions in practice. We conducted a qualitative investigation of BAs' ethical decision making to better understand how they identify ethical dilemmas in practice, how they make ethical decisions, and what resources they use during the decision-making process. Implications for behavior analytic practitioners and researchers are discussed.
Supplementary Information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40617-023-00804-1.
Related Concept Videos
Ethics in Research
Naturalistic Observations
Ethics and Bioethics
Behavior Modification
A real-world application of operant conditioning principles is applied...
Ethical Dilemmas II
Humanistic Psychology
This approach...

