How to Do Research as a BCBA Practitioner (Without Quitting Your Job)

The honest answer to "how do I do research as a practitioner" is to use your day job. You do not need a second career, a lab, or a free Saturday you do not have. You need a clinical question you already care about, one collaborator, and a way to double dip on the work that is already on your calendar. Dr. Stephanie Peterson lays out a time budget that any working BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst) can copy. The point is to fold research into hours you are already billing, not to bolt a second job on top.

You are already doing the hard part (hypothesis testing on a caseload)#

Walk through a normal week on your caseload. A new client shows up. The behavior does not match the referral. You watch for a few sessions. You form a guess about the function. You change one thing. You watch what happens. If it works, you keep going. If it does not, you change the next thing.

That is research. The only difference between what you do on Monday and what Peterson does in her lab is the paperwork at the end.

a big part of your job as a practitioner is taking the mess of everything that's occurring around you where variables are changing all the time and trying to make sense of things, forming a hypothesis about what you think is going on and then testing that hypothesis From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

Single-case design is the bridge. Most BCBAs already use it without naming it. You take a baseline. You introduce one intervention. You measure. You compare. The same logic that lets you defend a treatment plan to a parent is the logic that lets you defend a study to a reviewer.

the reasons we use single case design and research are not in any meaningful way different than we would use them in practice. And so the example I like to give is, you know, let's say that you're working with a client and you identify that a particular intervention is going to have an impact on lowering challenging behavior From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

If you can run a clean reversal or a multiple baseline for one client and write a clinical note about it, you have most of a brief practice paper. The work is already done. The write up is the missing piece.

Step 1: pick one client question you actually care about#

The first barrier is not time. It is idea overload. New writers try to pick a topic that will impress a journal. That is the wrong starting point. Start with a question you already lose sleep over.

Look at your current caseload. Pick the case that keeps surprising you. Maybe a kid who responds to one prompt level but not another. Maybe a teen whose self injury drops on a token economy you did not expect to work. Maybe a parent training format that lands every time. The question that bugs you the most is the question that has the best chance of becoming a paper, because you already have data, you already have stakes, and you already care.

Pick one. Write the question on an index card. Stick it on your monitor. The question can be small. Small is fine. "Did adding a high probability sequence change task acceptance for one client?" is a publishable question if your data are clean. You are not solving the field. You are answering one thing well.

Step 2: find one collaborator (university, peer, supervisor)#

The second barrier is going it alone. Most practitioners think research is something a lone wolf does at a desk after the kids go to bed. Peterson grew up in a lab that ran the other way.

find collaborators. I think some people have this notion that research is something you do by yourself. And I grew up in a lab where Dave Wacker gave us all these rules for success. And one of our rules for success was collaborate with others. From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

You need one collaborator. Not five. One. Pick from three pools.

The first pool is local universities. Email a behavior analysis faculty member with one paragraph. State the clinical question. State that you have a caseload with relevant data. Ask if a graduate student needs a project. Faculty want practitioner partners. You bring real cases. They bring writing time and statistics help. The fit is natural.

The second pool is your own clinic. Find a senior BCBA or a clinical director who has published before. Tell them your question. Ask if they will read a draft and add their name if the work is solid. Most senior clinicians say yes the first time they are asked. They want to mentor.

The third pool is peers. Two practitioners on different caseloads can run a small multiple baseline across clients and split the writing. That is how a lot of brief practice papers get done.

One collaborator changes the timeline from years to months.

Step 3: double-dip with work you are already doing#

This is the move nobody else writes about. The point of practitioner research is not to add hours. It is to use the hours you already bill.

use your day job, right? What's going on? What are you already doing? Where are you already? Where you could overlap and double dip a little bit. From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

Map the overlap. Look at three buckets of your normal week.

Direct service time. You are already taking data on every client. Pick one client whose data line up with your research question. Use those data. You are not running extra sessions. You are using the sessions you already ran.

Assessment time. Functional analyses, preference assessments, and skills assessments produce clean baselines. Those baselines are the first phase of most studies. If you are running an FA next week, design it so the data work for both clinical use and publication.

Supervision time. Your RBTs and trainees already collect interobserver agreement. That is a methods section. Your supervision notes are a fidelity check. That is another methods section. Nothing extra. You are using paperwork you already do.

The IRB (Institutional Review Board) question comes up here, and it is the place most practitioners freeze. Three workarounds keep you legal. Partner with a university and use their IRB. Use an independent IRB for a flat fee. Or design the project as a quality improvement case study, which sits outside the formal IRB definition in many journals as long as you have parent consent on file. Talk to your collaborator about which path fits the journal you have in mind.

Step 4: pick a friendly journal category before you start writing#

The last barrier is the blank page. Practitioners try to write a full empirical paper as a first effort. That is a hard format. There are friendlier formats that fit clinical work better.

Look at the journal table of contents before you write a word. Most behavior analysis journals have categories that are built for practitioners. Brief practices papers are short, single case, and tight. Case conferences walk through one client and one decision. Tutorials explain a procedure other clinicians can copy. These categories want practitioner data. Editors are actively looking for them.

Pick the category that fits your question. Read three papers in that category from the last two years. Match their structure. Use their headings. Use their reference style. You are not copying. You are matching a known shape so the editor does not have to do extra work.

If you are early in your career and the BACB and JABA feel out of reach for a first paper, look at Behavior Analysis in Practice. It was built for clinicians. The bar is rigor, not novelty. A clean small study with honest limitations is what they want.

What to do this week#

You do not have to plan the whole study today. You have to take one small step that pulls future you out of the chair.

This week, do four things. Write your one clinical question on an index card. Send one email to a possible collaborator. Pick one client whose existing data could anchor the project. Open one brief practices paper from the last two years and read the methods section twice.

That is a research start. It costs maybe two hours total. It is the difference between a person who keeps saying "I should publish" and a person who has a paper in draft six months from now.

Frequently asked questions#

Do I need a PhD to publish ABA research as a practitioner?

No. Most authors in clinical journal categories are practicing BCBAs, not academics. A doctorate helps with grant writing and editorial roles. It is not a requirement to publish a brief practice, a case conference, or a tutorial. Your collaborator can bring the academic credential if a reviewer asks for one. Your clinical data and clean design are what matter.

How many cases do I need before something is publishable?

One client with a clean reversal or a clean multiple baseline can be a brief practice paper. Two to three clients across a multiple baseline across participants is the more common shape. The field publishes single case work. The number of clients is less important than the design quality and the honesty of the data. A single subject with good interobserver agreement and a clear effect beats five clients with messy data.

How do I find a research collaborator if I do not work at a university?

Email behavior analysis faculty at the closest two universities to your zip code. One paragraph. State your question, your caseload, and what you are offering. Most faculty get fewer of these emails than you would think and most are happy to talk. If university faculty do not work out, ask your clinical director, your former supervisor, or a peer in another clinic. You are looking for one person who will read your drafts and add their name to the byline.

Where to go next#

If you want to see the four step path inside one full hour from a researcher who runs both a lab and clinical work, watch Dr. Stephanie Peterson's full CEU on openceu.com. She walks through her own studies, the IRB workarounds her team uses, and the journal categories she has had the best luck with.