To compare ABA client-experience results across time, lock each period's eligible cohort, exposure, measure version, access route, source, and maturity window. Show raw levels, distributions, missingness, and a separate repeated-client panel when available. Annotate service and collection changes. A before-and-after pattern supports a local signal, not proof that an ABA plan caused the change.
Define the comparison purpose
Specify whether Davi's review examines stability, emerging burden, response to a plan change, seasonal context, or system reach. The purpose sets the periods, exposure, client states, measure, and useful supporting evidence. Record the qualified owner and the decision that can follow.
Hold measurement conditions comparable
Match construct, question wording, response options, language, AAC access, lookback, privacy, collector route, scoring, missingness, and action workflow. When a version changed, report separate series or a justified bridge. Never continue one trend line through a meaning-bearing change without explanation.
Separate repeated and changing cohorts
A repeated-client panel describes the same people across periods, subject to their changing contexts and missing data. Repeated cross-sections describe each period's eligible population. Show both when useful, with counts and inclusion rules. Avoid treating the panel as representative of everyone who entered or left care.
Show access before response content
For each period, report eligible, mature, invited, accessible, responded, usable, and missing states. A shift in favorable ratings can result partly from who could respond. Davi's interpretation begins with reach and source before any average or category share.
Annotate concurrent changes
Record plan versions, staffing, setting, schedule, health or access context, collector training, reminders, technology, privacy, and other material events. The timeline helps reviewers generate explanations. It does not establish which change produced the observed pattern.
Use suitable displays
Plot raw case values or categories when privacy permits, plus medians, ranges, and counts rather than one average alone. Display missingness and cohort size beside each period. Use stable axes and labels. Mark version breaks, incomplete windows, and corrections visibly.
Interpret direction with client meaning
Ask Davi whether the measured change reflects a meaningful improvement, decline, tradeoff, or unchanged experience. A small numeric move may matter greatly, while a larger move may reflect a revised response scale. Keep his narrative and correction source-labeled beside the quantitative pattern.
Avoid causal language
Use wording such as increased after, decreased during, or differed between the defined periods. State concurrent changes and evidence limits. Demonstrating that a particular plan component caused experience change requires a design and evidence beyond an uncontrolled before-and-after report.
Set the next comparison prospectively
Define the next cohort, mature exposure, version, access checks, cutoff, and review decision before collection. Address current access failures now rather than waiting for trend confirmation. Preserve the present frozen periods so future corrections or late responses create an auditable report version.
Trace Davi's report from source to action
For Davi, trace every period-specific eligible records plus a separately identified repeated-client panel from the original event and access state through the frozen longitudinal comparison register, calculation, display, qualified interpretation, decision, implementation, client communication, confirmation, and closure. Preserve source, author, version, time, correction, missingness, and uncertainty at every handoff. A dashboard or report can organize evidence; it cannot supply missing authority, client meaning, or causal support.
Build Davi's operational report record
Create one versioned longitudinal comparison register for the two-period plan-fit review. Record purpose, audience, qualified owner, cohort definition, unit, exposure, maturity, measure and access versions, direct and proxy sources, privacy, consent and assent when applicable, AAC, raw counts, formulas, missing states, corrections, claims, actions, due dates, confirmation, distribution, retention, and next review. Limit row-level access and copied narrative to approved roles and uses.
Work through Davi's example
Davi's first period has 20 eligible records, 18 accessible opportunities, and 14 responses. The second also has 20 eligible records, with 16 accessible and 13 responses. Eleven clients appear in both periods. Report the two full-cohort funnels and the 11-client panel separately. Any response-content comparison uses the same approved measure version and preserves each period's missingness. Preserve the frozen population, every intermediate state, raw counts, denominators, missing reasons, source labels, versions, corrections, actions, and open work. This fictional example demonstrates one reporting control. It supplies no universal threshold, validation result, legal conclusion, treatment effect, population estimate, or outcome guarantee.
Use Davi's evidence for a bounded decision
Before release, identify the exact decision and authorized owner. For Davi, document what the report supports, what it cannot answer, current protection, further evidence, implementation test, client-facing explanation, disagreement route, next review, and reopening rule. Hold a decision when its cohort, access, source, calculation, privacy, or version evidence is unreliable. Preserve urgent individual routes while aggregate review continues.
Review Davi's results without losing the denominator
For Davi, show counts beside percentages and retain eligible, immature, inaccessible, missing, unfavorable, corrected, overdue, suppressed, and reopened items. Segment only with compatible definitions and privacy-safe groups. Explain measure, cohort, access, collector, setting, and service changes before comparing. Keep direct client report separate from proxy evidence, clinical outcome, treatment integrity, attendance, authorization, and payment.
Address Davi's main reporting risk
Comparing only Davi's 14 and 13 respondents would hide reduced access in the second period and mix changing people with within-person change. The register preserves both views. Review cohort construction, direct access, authorship, privacy, missingness, calculations, versions, corrections, claims, and action response separately. Accurate arithmetic cannot rescue a report built from the wrong population or measure. One favorable aggregate cannot close a serious individual concern, and one critical response cannot describe every client.
Choose Davi's next reporting action
Davi's team investigates the access decline, reviews the repeated-client cases, and delays any causal conclusion while the service and collection changes are assessed. Record the responsible roles, affected clients and reports, interim safeguards, corrected artifact, downstream recipients, due dates, validation evidence, accessible explanation, current state, and next governance check. Keep original evidence and report versions available. A correction changes the current artifact through an auditable path rather than erasing what readers previously received.
Apply current professional sources to Davi's report
For Davi, the BACB ethics hub identifies the current Ethics Code, which addresses understandable communication, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, confidentiality, assessment, documentation, risk, and evaluation for covered people. BACB has no separate organizational jurisdiction. The BCBA outline is examination content and supplies no practice authority. The CASP public summary gives high-level context for ABA treatment of autistic people. An evidence-based ABA framework supports integrating research evidence, clinical expertise, client values, and context.
Use reporting evidence carefully for Davi
For Davi's report, the treatment-integrity practitioner guide, Essig review, impact study, and reporting review support explicit units, procedures, representative evidence, observer controls, and cautious interpretation. They create no universal client-experience threshold, reporting formula, or causal conclusion. Breaux and Smith offer assent-focused practice guidance in an evolving evidence base. ASHA supports continuous AAC access.
Close Davi's reporting review
Review the longitudinal comparison register with Davi, the responsible clinician, measurement and operational owners, privacy and access roles, and the specialists named in the manifest. Verify that the cohort, access, sources, calculations, claims, actions, and limits remain understandable and reproducible. Preserve client corrections and open concerns. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.
Related resources
- How to Combine Narrative and Rating-Scale Client Feedback in ABA
- How to Segment ABA Client-Experience Data Safely
- How to Interpret Small ABA Client-Experience Samples
- How to Report Missing and Inaccessible Client-Experience Data in ABA
Sources
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Information and Ethics Codes
- Council of Autism Service Providers, ABA Practice Guidelines Version 3.0 public summary
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- Ethical Behavior Analysis: Evidence-Based Practice as a Framework for Ethical Decision Making
- A Practitioner Guide to Assessing and Improving Treatment Integrity
- Reporting of Treatment Integrity in Applied Behavior Analysis Research
- The Impact of Treatment Integrity on Intervention Effectiveness
- Treatment Integrity Reporting in Behavior Analysis Journals
- Breaux and Smith, Assent in Applied Behaviour Analysis and Positive Behaviour Support
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication