An individualized ABA mastery criterion defines the performance level, number and spacing of observations, independence, allowed errors or prompts, relevant people and settings, and next-step evidence for one meaningful skill. Choose each component from the person's goal, risk, opportunities, learning history, and expected real-world use. A copied percentage cannot establish durability, generalization, clinical value, or program completion.

Define the skill in observable and accessible terms

Include speech, AAC, gesture, movement, or another effective form that serves the person's chosen outcome.

Set the performance level and denominator

State correct or independent responses divided by eligible opportunities, with exact rules for missing, invalid, prompted, and withdrawn trials.

Choose the observation requirement

Name sessions, days, people, materials, or contexts needed and explain why that sample supports the next decision.

Specify what happens after criterion

Plan generalization, maintenance, support fading, continued practice, or another review without assuming the skill will persist.

Include client and clinical review

Record the person's view, burden, benefit, safety, and the qualified clinician's decision within scope.

Build Talia's individualized mastery specification

For the individualized ABA mastery criterion question, create a versioned individualized mastery specification. Preserve the target, client-selected purpose, operational response, accepted communication forms, eligible opportunities, observation time, numerator, denominator, independence, prompts, context, partners, materials, criterion, teaching history, generalization, maintenance, access, safety, decision owner, actual transition, and follow-up. Another qualified reviewer should be able to reconstruct Talia's result without guessing what counted.

Work through Talia's mastery example

Talia chooses a goal of requesting a break through speech or AAC. Her criterion requires at least 8 of 10 naturally occurring eligible opportunities across two days and two familiar partners, before a prompt, with every request honored. Generalization and maintenance are measured separately. The rule fits this communication goal and is not a template for other skills. Show raw counts and every relevant cell or date before adding percentages. This fictional community break-request program example illustrates one decision pattern and does not establish a universal mastery level, observation count, probe schedule, treatment plan, or transition rule.

Audit Talia's source evidence

Talia's specification defines eligible opportunity, independent response, accepted forms, ten-opportunity denominator, two-day and two-partner scope, prompt handling, system access, and what follows criterion attainment. It records Talia's priorities and how she can pause or change the plan. The audit also checks definition and criterion versions, data-entry history, invalid and missing states, opportunity selection, observer agreement when useful, graph or table calculations, prompt coding, teaching integrity, and corrections. Unresolved discrepancies stay visible and pause any transition that depends on them.

Address Talia's main decision risk

A high percentage can still come from easy, repetitive, or inaccessible trials. Talia's review examines the quality and relevance of opportunities and avoids using communication access as a consequence for performance. A dashboard can calculate and surface evidence. It cannot decide that a skill is meaningful, safe, generalized, maintained, or complete. Those judgments belong to the person and qualified roles under the applicable plan and authority.

Choose Talia's next step

Meeting the acquisition criterion opens a qualified review. It does not automatically remove supports, end teaching, create a discharge decision, or predict future performance in unmeasured settings. Record the decision, rationale, owner, date, support plan, and review trigger. Keep acquisition, generalization, maintenance, and clinical value as separate evidence so one favorable state cannot silently satisfy another.

Protect Talia's access and choice

Keep Talia's AAC, interpreters, mobility, food, water, bathroom use, prescribed care, health support, rest, relationships, and emergency help available. Ordinary communication, sensory, visual, and mobility supports remain present during teaching and probes unless the defined question concerns one support and qualified review approves the safe comparison. Use accessible consent and assent processes when applicable and respond to withdrawal, dissent, or distress.

Apply current sources to Talia's review

Talia's source trail supports treating the criterion as one instructional variable whose relationship to maintenance and generalization must be checked. The BACB ethics hub and CASP public summary provide professional context, while the BCBA Test Content Outline identifies examination content on measurement and skill acquisition. The WWC handbook supplies research-design context. A mastery and maintenance review, a replication of criterion effects, and a preliminary criterion analysis show that criterion details can affect later responding and remain incompletely standardized. A generalization case study and ABA instructional-design paper address purposeful planning. ASHA supports continuous AAC access.

Rehearse Talia's decision rule

Test the individualized mastery specification with fictional cases containing 0 of 0 opportunities, a perfect 2 of 2, unequal session denominators, prompted success, a missing session, a weak context, an overdue probe, and a system-access failure. Confirm that statuses, denominators, holds, calculations, and review routes behave as intended. Store expected outputs, software version, reviewer notes, and the correction log before the rule touches live data.

Close Talia's mastery review

Review the individualized mastery specification with Talia, the responsible clinician, and other specialists required by the target. Preserve raw data, active criterion, teaching context, client input, access and safety evidence, generalization, maintenance, qualified decision, actual transition, exceptions, and later outcomes. Keep the page draft and noindex until every manifest-named review is complete.

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