Path 2 Potential provides BCBA and BCaBA Supervision online – so, regardless if you are a working professional, a busy graduate student, or simply in a tough financial situation, we will customize a plan that is perfect for you!
With over 20 years of experience, our specialists help you prepare for the certification exam and comply with supervised independent fieldwork requirements. They also help you be an effective practitioner for your future clients.
From pre-work and meetings to work feedback, everything is held online for your convenience. Our remote BCBA and BCaBA supervision programs in NY are available at a low cost to ensure you complete this requirement even with financial roadblocks.
No matter your financial situation, we encourage you to be a behavior analyst and start changing lives — not only of those on the spectrum but also their families.
What to Expect with Path 2 Potential BCBA Supervision Online:
To qualify under this standard at the BCBA level, supervisees must complete 1500 hours of Supervised Independent Fieldwork in behavior analysis. To qualify under this standard at the BCaBA level, supervisees must complete 1000 hours of Supervised Independent Fieldwork in behavior analysis. A supervisory period is two weeks. In order to count experience hours within any given supervisory period, supervisees must be supervised at least once during that period for no less than 5% of the total hours spent in Supervised Independent Fieldwork. For example, 20 hours of experience would include at least 1 supervised hour.
To qualify under this standard at the BCBA level, supervisees must complete, with a passing grade, 1000 hours of Practicum in behavior analysis within a university practicum program approved by the BACB and taken for graduate academic credit. To qualify under this standard at the BCaBA level, supervisees must complete, with a passing grade, 670 hours of Practicum in behavior analysis within a university practicum program approved by the BACB and taken for academic credit. A supervisory period isone week. In order to count experience hours within any given supervisory period, supervisees must be supervised at least once during that period for no less than 7.5%of the total hours spent in Practicum. For example, 20 hours of experience would include at least 1.5 supervised hours.
To qualify under this standard at the BCBA level, supervisees must complete, with a passing grade, 750 hours of Intensive Practicum in behavior analysis within a university practicum program approved by the BACB and taken for graduate academic credit. To qualify under this standard at the BCaBA level, supervisees must complete, with a passing grade, 500 hours of Intensive Practicum in behavior analysis within a university practicum program approved by the BACB and taken for academic credit. A supervisory period is one week. In order to count experience hours within any given supervisory period, supervisees must be supervised at least twice during that period for no less than 10% of the total hours spent in Intensive Practicum. For example, 20 hours of experience would include at least 2 supervised hours.
For all three of the above options, no fewer than 10 hours but no more than 30 hours may be accrued per week. Supervisees may accrue experience in only one category at a time (i.e., Supervised Independent Fieldwork, Practicum, or Intensive Practicum).
Supervisees may elect to accrue hours in a single category or may combine the two types to meet the fieldwork requirement (i.e., within a supervisory period or across supervisory periods),
with fieldwork hours for Concentrated Supervised Fieldwork having approximately 1.33 times the temporal value
of Supervised Fieldwork.
Supervisees may not start accumulating Supervised Independent Fieldwork, Practicum, or Intensive Practicum hours until they have started attending courses required to meet the BACB coursework requirements.
The supervisee’s primary focus should be acquiring new behavior-analytic skills related to the BACB Third Edition Task List. Activities must be consistent with the dimensions of applied behavior analysis identified by Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1968) in the article “Some Current Dimensions of Applied Behavior Analysis” published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis.
Supervisees are strongly encouraged to have multiple experiences (e.g., sites, populations) with multiple supervisors and from each of the activity areas below.
Examples of activities that will not count as experience include: attending meetings with little or no behavior-analytic content; providing interventions that are not based in behavior analysis; performing nonbehavioral administrative activities; and completing nonbehavioral assessments (e.g., diagnostic assessments, intellectual assessments), paperwork, documentation, billing, or any other activities that are not directly related to behavior analysis.
Clients may be any persons for whom behavior-analytic services are appropriate. However, the supervisee may not be related to the client or the client’s primary caretaker or be the client’s primary caretaker. Supervisees must work with multiple clients during the experience period. (Also, see the following relevant sections of theGuidelines for Responsible Conduct for Behavior Analysts: 1.06, 1.07, 2.0, 3.01, 3.03, 3.04, 3.05, 4.0, and 9.07.)
During the experience period, the supervisor must be a Board Certified Behavior Analyst or Board Certified Behavior Analyst-Doctoral in good standing. The supervisor may not be related to, subordinate to, or employed by the supervisee during the experience period. Employment does not include compensation received by the supervisor from the supervisee for supervision services. (Also, see the following relevant sections of theGuidelines for Responsible Conduct for Behavior Analysts: 1.05, 1.06, 1.07, and 5.0.)
The purpose of supervision is to improve and maintain the behavior-analytic, professional, and ethical repertoires of the supervisee and facilitate the delivery of high-quality services to his/her clients. Effective behavior-analytic supervision includes:
The supervisor must observe and provide feedback to the supervisee on his/her behavior-analytic activities with a client in the natural environment during each required supervisory period. In-person, on-site observation is preferred. However, this may be conducted via web-cameras, videotape, videoconferencing, or similar means in lieu of the supervisor being physically present; synchronous (real-time) observation is strongly encouraged.
Supervision may be conducted in small groups for no more than half of the total supervised hours in each supervisory period. Small groups are interactive meetings in which 2-10 supervisees who share similar experiences participate in the supervision activities described above. If non-supervisees are present during the meeting, their participation should be limited so as to increase the interaction opportunities of supervisees. The remainder of the total supervision hours in each supervisory period must consist of individual supervision.
The supervisee and supervisor must execute a written contract prior to the onset of the experience. The purpose of the contract is to protect all involved parties and align experience activities with the purpose of supervision described under Nature of Supervision (below). The contract should:
The supervisee and supervisor are responsible for retaining and providing to the BACB, if requested, a copy of the contractual agreement.
The supervisee and supervisor are responsible for collecting documentation for each supervision period on the Experience Supervision Form during each supervisory period. One form should be completed at the end of each supervisory period. The BACB reserves the right to request this documentation at any time following an individual’s application to take the certification exam. This documentation should NOT be submitted with an exam application unless specifically requested by the BACB.
Supervisors may develop their own version of the Experience Supervision Form. These alternative forms must include all of the following elements:
Supervision documentation should be retained for at least 7 years.
The BACB Experience Standards and Forms were updated in September 2012. Please be sure to use the current version, available here. All applicants for certification must submit documentation of their experience using the current version of the Experience Verification Form. Previous versions of the form will no longer be accepted.
If a supervisee is unable to obtain the signature of a supervisor on the Experience Verification Form or disagrees with the total number of hours recorded on the form, the supervisee may supplement his or her application with proof of the following:
*Supervision guidelines provided by the BACB website
First, review the list of Acceptable Activities in the Supervised Fieldwork Requirements section of the BCBA or BCaBA Handbook. Then, ask your supervisor. They are ultimately responsible for determining whether an activity meets our fieldwork requirements, lines up with your professional goals, and helps you develop the skills you need to demonstrate competence in behavior analysis.
| Type of Activity | Definition | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Restricted | An activity that involves the delivery of therapeutic and instructional procedures directly to clients. | These activities are optional and must notmake up more than a certain percentage of your fieldwork hours. See the BCBA or BCaBA Handbook for details. |
| Unrestricted | An activity that best exemplifies the work of a behavior analyst who oversees and develops programs and systems for others to implement. | These activities are required and must make up a certain percentage (or more) of your fieldwork hours. See the BCBA or BCaBA Handbook for details. |
It’s up to you and your supervisor. Trainees are not required to accrue restricted hours, but they are required to accrue unrestricted hours so that they’re fully prepared to do everything a certified behavior analyst does. This leaves room for many different approaches. Some trainees begin their fieldwork with primarily restricted activities, and others jump right into both, especially if both types are relevant to a client’s programming.
A client is anyone (i.e., a person or a group of people) who receives behavior-analytic services in any setting. For example, a client might be an older adult in an assisted living facility or a group of employees in a corporate office. If you’re ever unsure, ask your supervisor. They can determine who is considered a client and who isn’t.
It’s up to you and your supervisor. (Do we sound like a broken record yet?) But there’s a catch. For the benefit of you and your clients, supervisor-trainee contacts must happen in real time. For example, if your supervisor watches an hour-long video of you delivering services but does not provide immediate, real-time feedback, that hour could count toward the observation with a client requirement but not the supervisor-trainee contact or total supervised hours requirement. If you and your supervisor watch the video together, pausing to discuss feedback and behavior-analytic principles, the hour could count toward all requirements at once.
No. For your hours to count toward the observation with a client requirement, you and your supervisor must have a supervision contract in place. You may be in contact with other BCBAs not listed in your supervision contract, but those interactions will not count toward your fieldwork hours. That being said, those interactions are not for naught! They might count toward your independent hours.
Note: If you’re accruing fieldwork at an organization with multiple supervisors, please make sure that all of your supervisors are included in your supervision contract and that you’re using the correct Monthly and Final Fieldwork Verification Forms. See our Documenting Fieldwork: Helpful Answers to Your FAQs blog for more information about your documentation system.
If the hours you work meet all of the fieldwork and RBT or BCaBA supervision requirements, you may double dip. For example, if you have an hour-long meeting with your RBT Supervisor, you may count it toward your supervised fieldwork hours (only if you have an applicable supervision contract in place, your supervisor meets all necessary qualifications, and the meeting’s activities are appropriate for and meet both sets of requirements).
Before you consider double dipping, please keep in mind that there are a number of important differences between BACB requirements. For one, someone who is qualified to be an RBT Supervisor may not be qualified to be a fieldwork supervisor. In addition, there’s a limit on the number of restricted hours that may be counted toward fieldwork hours, and unrestricted activities are likely outside of the scope of an RBT’s responsibilities.
Absolutely. Your fieldwork must be accrued within 5 consecutive years, but in that time period, you are more than welcome to take breaks and even change settings and/or supervisors.
Yes, under one condition: You must have been enrolled in a qualifying behavior-analytic course (that you completed or will complete with a passing grade) before you began accruing fieldwork hours. If this is true, you can accrue hours during a break from school or even after you’ve completed your program and are no longer enrolled.
It depends! (Now we’ve really come full circle.)
If you’re receiving supervision at an organization with multiple supervisors, yes. It’s possible in this situation because one supervisor coordinates all activities, ensuring that the topics and clients covered in individual and group supervision meetings correlate.
If you’re receiving supervision from one supervisor or a few independent supervisors, no. In this case, the same supervisor must provide your group and individual supervision and meet all of the fieldwork requirements independently.
*Q&A provided by the BACB website