Members should help choose group contingency outcome options through an accessible process that reduces peer influence and preserves minority preferences. Offer several feasible activities or outcomes, collect choices privately when useful, explain how selections are combined, allow an opt-out or equivalent alternative, and reassess after experience. Essential needs, communication, safety, and ordinary access never belong in the choice set or behind group performance.
Choose group contingency outcome options
Ask each member what they enjoy, dislike, need to avoid, and can access. Screen options for safety, sensory and disability access, cultural fit, cost, time, setting rules, and individual restrictions. Describe the exact duration, location, and alternatives before voting or ranking.
Reduce peer influence
A small study in two middle-school special-education classrooms used electronic group preference surveys and recommended anonymous voting until research indicates otherwise (group preference study). Its findings do not establish one voting method, population-wide preference, or reinforcer.
Protect minority choices
A majority result can still exclude or distress some members. Offer a parallel activity, rotate among acceptable options, use individual outcomes, or choose a universally acceptable brief activity. Record declines and unavailable options rather than treating nonparticipation as misbehavior.
Keep consent and communication active
The Ethics Code addresses client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, risk, and evaluation. The ASHA portal supports continuous communication access. Members need ways to change a choice after trying it and to leave the outcome activity safely.
A practical example
Four members privately rank music, outdoor break, drawing, and quiet reading. Three rank drawing first; one selects quiet reading and reports that group drawing is uncomfortable. The plan offers a parallel quiet-reading option. After two weeks, members rerank choices rather than treating the first survey as permanent.
Questions families can use
Were choices private and accessible? Who screened feasibility? What happens to a minority preference? Can someone opt out? Are choices reassessed after experience? Which essential items stay outside the arrangement?
Sources
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- Krispin and colleagues, Interpersonal and Group Contingencies
- Using a Group Stimulus Preference Assessment to Design an Effective Group Contingency
- An Application of the Group-Oriented Concurrent-Chains Arrangement
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Finni resources
