To define a prompt performance assessment question, connect Oona's chosen decision to the natural cue, accessible response, current prompt topography and level, latency, consequence, error correction, and comparison that matter. Include access, baseline, client experience, burden, stop rules, and qualified authority. The question should distinguish prompted success, independence, transfer, generalization, mastery, and treatment effect instead of blending them into one score.
Begin with Oona's decision
Ask what Oona wants to say, do, choose, or complete in the book-club routine. Describe the natural cue, current supports, access, effort, and reason prompt evidence could improve that experience.
Define natural cue and response
Describe the cue expected to support later responding and every accessible response form. Include speech, AAC, gesture, writing, movement, or assistive technology where they serve the same goal.
Define the prompt
Record verbal, gestural, model, positional, visual, textual, stimulus, physical, or combined prompts in observable terms. A hierarchy label alone cannot show what Oona experiences.
Set the independent window
Start the clock at natural-cue onset and end it at the planned prompt point. Account for processing, motor, AAC, partner, and environmental access rather than choosing speed as the goal by default.
Name the inference
Decide whether the evidence concerns prompt delivery, immediate performance, fading, natural-cue control, transfer, generalization, burden, or treatment effect. Each needs a different denominator and design.
Use this sequence to define a prompt performance assessment question
Start with Oona's priority, define cue, response, prompt, latency, and consequence, verify access and authority, build a useful comparison, state decision paths, and collect only evidence that could change support.
Build Oona's prompt-performance question brief
Create one versioned prompt-performance question brief for the community-book-club participation review. Include Oona's priority, natural cue, accessible response, independent window, prompt topography, level, latency, sequence, escalation or fading, consequence, correction, access, health, exposure, planned and delivered prompts, first-response codes, reserved probes, integrity, agreement, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, direct experience, burden, result, uncertainty, decision, owner, correction, and review trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.
Validate Oona's prompt evidence
A second reviewer should identify Oona's natural cue, response, independent window, prompt, latency, consequence, error correction, access, comparison, and decision from the brief alone. Trace each field to direct report, records, observation, or a labeled hypothesis. Predeclare stronger, weaker, mixed, invalid, and withdrawn result paths. Confirm that the plan never removes AAC or waits through distress merely to observe independence.
Keep Oona's prompting, independence, and experience separate
Measure prompt delivery and integrity with due opportunities. Measure independent, prompted, error, correction, and probe performance with their own units. Ask Oona separately about clarity, effort, comfort, usefulness, burden, and whether assessment should continue. Accurate prompting can coexist with poor fit or unwanted control. Better experience can also occur without evidence that fading caused transfer.
Work through Oona's example
Oona's brief has 17 required fields. Fourteen are ready. The natural cue is described only as book discussion, the independent wait window is missing, and the correction response is pooled with initial performance. Report 14/17 readiness and hold structured comparisons until those three fields close. Oona's ordinary communication support and participation remain available. Preserve every planned and valid unit, raw count, denominator, cue state, response code, prompt topography, level, latency, delivery, correction, access state, integrity result, probe, withdrawal, direct report, system failure, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It offers no universal prompt hierarchy, independence, mastery, generalization, diagnosis, trait, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee.
Address Oona's main assessment risk
A question such as why does Oona need prompts can hide an unclear cue, inaccessible response, early partner help, task difficulty, motor effort, health, and a prompt history created by the teaching design. Review cue and response definitions, prompt topography, latency, sequence, access, motor and sensory needs, consequence, correction, partner behavior, context, client experience, authority, and causal scope separately. High prompted accuracy cannot repair an inaccessible, burdensome, or ethically unsound arrangement.
Keep prompting concepts and authority clear for Oona
The ABAI Basic Principles page supplies broad higher-education context. The BACB Test Content Outline covers response and stimulus prompts, prompt fading, time delay, stimulus-control transfer, integrity, and evaluation as examination content. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, involvement, consent and assent when applicable, medical needs, risk, data, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. These sources do not create an individualized prompt plan for Oona.
Use individualized prompt selection for Oona
The prompting decision tool organizes variables for evaluating and selecting prompting strategies. It supports explicit attention to skill, task, error history, prompt type, fading, efficiency, and context. It remains an evidence-informed decision aid rather than a universal hierarchy, legal authority, or guaranteed procedure for Oona.
Read small prompting comparisons cautiously for Oona
Libby and colleagues compared most-to-least, least-to-most, and a delayed most-to-least arrangement in small Lego-construction studies. Error and acquisition-speed patterns varied by procedure and participant. The study supplies comparison variables rather than a universal winner or expected outcome for Oona.
Expect task and participant variation for Oona
Fentress and Lerman compared prompting procedures across tasks and reported variation relevant to acquisition and prompt dependence. Narrow samples and tasks limit generalization. For Oona, report the task, natural cue, prompt history, errors, latency, independent probes, access, and client experience directly.
Preserve treatment scope, AAC, assent, and access for Oona
The CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their communication tools or devices. Breaux and Smith provide assent-focused guidance in an evolving evidence base. Follow governing sources and preserve communication, health care, food, water, bathroom use, mobility, rest, relationships, safety, and emergency help for Oona.
Choose Oona's next bounded action
Oona chooses whether the natural discussion question, rather than staff movement, supports an accessible contribution as the first practical question. Record the qualified owner, supporting evidence, effective date, current supports, health and access state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the original assessment when cues, responses, people, systems, tasks, or preferences change. A new arrangement creates a dated version rather than an error in Oona's earlier performance.
Close Oona's prompt review
Review the prompt-performance question brief with Oona, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that prompted performance stays separate from natural-cue control, teaching and probe denominators are reproducible, AAC and basic access remain protected, health and motor questions stay with qualified professionals, and conclusions remain bounded to the sampled response, prompt, task, people, and context. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.
Related resources
- How to Build a Prompt Opportunity and Latency Measure
- How to Document Prompt and Stimulus-Control Transfer Evidence
- How to Audit Delivered Prompts Against the Teaching Plan
- How to Reassess Prompt Performance After Access or Task Changes
Sources
- Association for Behavior Analysis International, Basic Principles in Behavior Analysis
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- Council of Autism Service Providers, ABA Practice Guidelines Version 3.0 public summary
- Cengher and colleagues, A Decision-Making Tool for Evaluating and Selecting Prompting Strategies
- Libby and colleagues, A Comparison of Most-to-Least and Least-to-Most Prompting
- Fentress and Lerman, A Comparison of Two Prompting Procedures Across Tasks
- Breaux and Smith, Assent in Applied Behaviour Analysis and Positive Behaviour Support
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication