Target Behaviors

Select or create the Target Behavior that will be addressed by this FBA and BIP.

Behavior Advantage Best Practice

FBA/BIPs are often most effective when they focus on a limited number of high-priority Target Behaviors. While multiple Target Behaviors may be appropriate, keeping the assessment and behavior plan focused helps teams collect meaningful data, identify clear behavioral patterns, and implement interventions with greater consistency.

When a student exhibits numerous interfering behaviors, consider prioritizing the behaviors that have the greatest impact on learning, socialization, safety, or classroom functioning. As progress is made, the team can expand the assessment or revise the behavior plan to address additional behaviors when appropriate.

If needed, click Add Another Behavior to include additional Target Behaviors. When a student exhibits multiple interfering behaviors, consider prioritizing the behavior that has the greatest impact on learning, socialization, safety, or classroom functioning.

If multiple behaviors appear to occur for a similar reason or purpose, you may also choose to group them together. See Grouping Target Behaviors for additional guidance.

Click Add Custom Behavior to create your own Target Behavior.

Note: A Target Behavior must be selected and saved before completing the remaining sections of the Simple BIP.

Operational Definition

Define the target behavior in specific, observable, and measurable terms. A clear definition helps ensure that team members consistently recognize and respond to the behavior.

Tip: Describe the behavior as if a video camera were recording the student. What would the camera see and hear?

Examples

• Preferred: Disruption = making inappropriate or off-topic comments during instructional activities.
• Not Preferred: Disruption = will not pay attention and wants to control the classroom.

Baseline

Document the degree to which the target behavior currently occurs before implementing the behavior plan. This may be based on existing data or a reasonable team estimate. Baseline information can be measured by frequency (times per hour, day, or week), duration (length of time each occurrence lasts), and/or severity/intensity.

Establishing a baseline helps teams monitor progress and evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention over time.

Example: The student engages in work refusal approximately 2–3 times per day, with each occurrence lasting 5–30 minutes.

Choosing and Grouping Target Behaviors

Students often exhibit multiple behaviors that interfere with learning, socialization, and/or safety. Choosing the right Target Behavior(s) is an important step in developing an effective assessment and behavior plan.

Start Small When Possible

For Simple BIPs, we recommend focusing on a single, high-priority Target Behavior whenever possible. This helps keep the plan practical, manageable, and easier for staff to implement consistently. As progress is made, the team can update the plan or address additional behaviors as needed.

For more comprehensive FBA/BIPs, teams may choose to assess and plan for multiple Target Behaviors when doing so helps better understand and support the student's needs.

When Should Multiple Behaviors Be Included?

Consider including multiple Target Behaviors when:

• Several behaviors appear to occur in similar situations.
• Multiple behaviors interfere significantly with learning, socialization, or safety.
• The behaviors appear to serve a similar purpose or function.
• Addressing one behavior alone would not adequately address the student's support needs.

When working with multiple behaviors, teams generally use one of two approaches: Prioritize or Group.

Prioritize

When a student exhibits numerous interfering behaviors, it may be impractical to assess and address all of them at once. In these situations, consider focusing on the highest-priority behavior(s) first.

Successfully reducing priority behaviors may:

• Improve related behaviors as well.
• Create momentum for future intervention efforts.
• Provide a foundation for addressing additional behaviors later.

Example: If a student engages in aggression, property destruction, work refusal, inappropriate comments, repetitive questioning, and other disruptive behaviors, the team may choose to focus initial assessment and intervention efforts on aggression due to its impact on safety.

Response Class and Behavior Grouping

Sometimes multiple Target Behaviors occur in similar situations and appear to serve the same function or purpose. In these cases, the behaviors may be treated as a Response Class and assessed together.

Consider grouping behaviors only when you are reasonably confident the behaviors:

• Produce a similar effect on the environment.
• Occur within a similar behavior chain or escalation cycle.
• Serve the same function or purpose.

Example: Blurting out, disruption, and minor property destruction may all occur during writing activities and appear to function to gain teacher attention. In this case, the team may choose to assess and plan for these behaviors as a group.

Grouping and Managing Target Behaviors

Behavior Advantage allows users to group multiple Target Behaviors so they can be assessed and/or behavior planned together.

For additional guidance on selecting Target Behaviors, see: [Target Behaviors Article]

Enable Grouping in a FBA/BIP

1. Open the student's FBA/BIP or Simple BIP.
2. Select Target Behaviors from the menu on the left.
3. Click Enable Grouping.
4. Select the Target Behaviors you would like to group by checking the boxes next to each behavior.
5. Use the Up and Down arrows to adjust the order in which behaviors will appear on the printed report.
6. Click Save.

Note: For simplicity, when 2 or more Target Behaviors are saved in Simple BIP, they are automatically grouped.

Tip: Behaviors can be grouped while still allowing individual behaviors to be assessed and planned for separately.

Assessing and Planning for Grouped Behaviors

After grouping behaviors, use the blue Target Behavior drop-down menu to select Grouped Target Behaviors.

Any information entered while Grouped Target Behaviors is selected will apply to all behaviors within the group and will appear as grouped information on the printed report.

You may also continue to assess and plan for individual Target Behaviors within the group. Simply select a specific Target Behavior from the drop-down menu and enter information that applies only to that behavior.

Example

A School Psychologist groups three Target Behaviors: aggression, vocal/verbal outbursts, and work refusal.

She completes the FBA and develops a BIP using Grouped Target Behaviors, allowing the assessment findings and behavior plan to apply to all three behaviors.

However, she also wants to recommend one Prevention Strategy and two Response Strategies that apply only to aggression. She selects Aggression from the Target Behavior drop-down menu and enters those recommendations within the BIP.

The aggression-specific recommendations will appear separately in the aggression section of the printed report, while the shared recommendations remain associated with the grouped behaviors.