Abstract
Discontinuous measurement involves dividing an observation into intervals and recording whether a behavior occurred during some or all of each interval (i.e., interval recording) or at the exact time of observation (i.e., momentary time sampling; MTS). Collecting discontinuous data is often easier for observers than collecting continuous data, but it also produces more measurement error. Smaller intervals (e.g., 5 s, 10 s, 15 s) tend to produce less error but may not be used in everyday practice. This study examined the most common intervals used by a large sample of data collectors and evaluated the effect of these intervals on measurement error. The most commonly used intervals fell between 2 and 5 min. We then analyzed over 800 sessions to evaluate the correspondence between continuous and discontinuous data at each commonly used interval. Intervals of 3 min or less produced the greatest correspondence, and MTS outperformed interval recording.
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Author Note
The authors thank Jamila Pitts for assistance with coding data from research articles.
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Research Highlights
• Practitioners often use discontinuous measurement intervals that are longer than recommended in the empirical literature.
• Intervals and samples longer than 3 min produced error on every metric examined, whereas those at or below 3 min were generally quite accurate.
• The default settings in an electronic data-collection system were often the ones used in programming.
• The level of problem behavior in the session systematically impacted the correlations between discontinuous and continuous measures with very small amounts of problem behavior producing the lowest correlations at all values.
• Practitioners should use small intervals or samples for discontinuous measurement and should not use discontinuous measurement of any type for very low amounts of problem behavior.
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LeBlanc, L.A., Lund, C., Kooken, C. et al. Procedures and Accuracy of Discontinuous Measurement of Problem Behavior in Common Practice of Applied Behavior Analysis. Behav Analysis Practice 13, 411–420 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-019-00361-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-019-00361-6