The team decides who should collect the data. If several people are recording data, be sure that there are agreed upon standards and that each one is familiar with guidelines and procedures for data collection. Behavioral analysis must be conducted with the dignity of the student as a primary regard. Functional analysis is appropriate because it acknowledges that a student s behavior is reasonable from the student s perspective. There is logic to their behavior and functional analysis is an attempt to understand that logic.
Functional analysis is a process for looking at relationships between behavior and the environment.
Data should be collected for a minimum of 2 to 5 days or until a minimum of approximately 10 occurrences of the behavior have been recorded. At that point, you may see patterns among environmental events and behaviors. Cautiously avoid allowing a functional analysis to become a process to blame the student for behaving in undesirable ways. This is a somewhat new focus for many people. This thinking considers a student s dignity and autonomy to assume that functional reasons exist for challenging behavior rather than to think that it occurs because of some major trait or characteristic.