Has Public Policy Exceeded Our Knowledge Base? This Is a Two-Part Question

There is wording in the IDEA amendments of 1997 that requires the use of functional behavioral assessment (FA). In reaction to this wording Nelson, Roberts, Mathur, and Rutherford (1999) and the authors of the other five articles in this Forum on functional assessment (Gable, 1999; Gresham, Quinn, & Restori, 1999; Scott & Nelson, 1999; Sugai, Horner, & Sprague, 1999; Walker & Sprague, this issue) reviewed and discussed the literature and research pertaining to FA. Taken as a whole, the salient points of these articles are as follows: * Everyone agrees that FA is a good technique. * Everyone agrees that the research on FA has some flaws. * There is some disagreement about the advisability of implementing FA at this time. Two aspects of the disagreement about implementation appear to be (1) concerns about the research base for FA and (2) concerns about the practicality of implementing FA. The first concern can be converted into a question: "Should there be a complete and unflawed research base supporting a practice before that practice can be required in law?" The title of the article by Nelson and colleagues, "Has Public Policy Exceeded Our Knowledge Base?" seems to be asking this question. While the authors' answer is yes, they also state that "it appears that there is rarely a strong link between research and policy. Thus, our goal is not to suggest such a link is critical in the case of functional behavioral assessment" (P. 170). After reading that statement, one gets the feeling that their answer may really be "Yes, but who cares?" Perhaps the statement was included to limit the scope of their review. Still, if the goal of their presentation was not to suggest that a powerful research foundation is critical prior to policy mandates, we wonder why the authors chose to emphasize policy (and the status of a research base) in their title. An additional source of disagreement may be varying opinions about the relative importance of the need for implementation of FA. That sort of consideration (i.e., the relative importance of things) may have led some of the authors-and policymakers-to depart from an assiduous analysis of the research base. This second concern, about the practicality of implementation, was expressed by several authors. For example, because of the resources and expertise demanded when carrying out FA, Walker and Sprague described the labor-intensive process of its use with even a single student as "mind boggling." This observation was supported by Scott and Nelson's concern about the "palatability" of FA. Similarly, Gable expressed concern about widespread fidelity of implementation. Taken together these comments go beyond a discussion of flaws in the research to expressions of concern about the practicality of widespread implementation. Still, the use of FA appears to be mandated in some cases. Because legislative, judicial, and administrative mandates develop out of a social context and evolve into social policy, it is a good idea to talk about the place of both research and policy in this equation. In other words, when answering a question such as "Has public policy exceeded our knowledge base?" we should try to balance discussion of the research with a discussion of policy (the term policy, as employed through out this issue, is synonymous with the 1997 IDEA amendments). A Functional View of the Legislation Let us assume for a moment that writing a policy mandating the implementation of FA is an example of a problem behavior. One of the core tenets of FA is that behaviors are purposeful and that if one can determine the function or goal of a behavior, one can design better plans to increase, decrease, or maintain it. Following this logic, we will now propose a chain of hypotheses regarding the legislative functions of including FA in the recent IDEA amendments. As you read each function, try to judge its relative importance against the seriousness of the previously mentioned research flaws and implementation difficulties. …