Suarez, V. D., Marya, V., et al. (2022).
Behavior analysis in practice, 16(3), 657–671.
Abstract
Human service practitioners from varying fields make ethical decisions daily. At some point during their careers, many behavior analysts may face ethical decisions outside the range of their previous education, training, and professional experiences. To help practitioners make better decisions, researchers have published ethical decision-making models; however, it is unknown the extent to which published models recommend similar behaviors. Thus, we systematically reviewed and analyzed ethical decision-making models from published peer-reviewed articles in behavior analysis and related allied health professions. We identified 55 ethical decision-making models across 60 peer-reviewed articles, seven primary professions (e.g., medicine, psychology), and 22 subfields (e.g., dentistry, family medicine). Through consensus-based analysis, we identified nine behaviors commonly recommended across the set of reviewed ethical decision-making models with almost all (n = 52) models arranging the recommended behaviors sequentially and less than half (n = 23) including a problem-solving approach. All nine ethical decision-making steps clustered around the ethical decision-making steps in the Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts published by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (2020) suggesting broad professional consensus for the behaviors likely involved in ethical decision making.
Here are some thoughts:
The article provides a comprehensive review of 55 ethical decision-making models drawn from seven professional disciplines, including psychology, medicine, education, and behavior analysis. The authors aimed to identify common decision-making steps across these models and analyze their applicability to behavior analysts, especially in navigating complex, real-world ethical dilemmas that extend beyond the scope of formal training.
The researchers distilled nine common steps in ethical decision-making, including identifying ethical concerns, considering the impact on stakeholders, referencing both professional and personal ethical codes, gathering context-specific information, analyzing and weighing options, and following up on outcomes. Most models were structured sequentially—suggesting ethical decision making functions as a behavior chain, where each step builds on the previous one. Importantly, less than half of the models explicitly included problem-solving strategies, which involve considering multiple actions and predicting their potential consequences. This highlights a potential area for improvement in existing models.
The study found strong alignment between the steps identified in the literature and those recently incorporated into the Behavior Analyst Certification Board’s (BACB) Ethics Code (2020)—a notable development, as the authors' review was conducted before the release of the BACB's new model. This convergence suggests growing consensus across disciplines on the key components of ethical decision-making and validates the BACB's approach as grounded in decades of interdisciplinary research.
