SOCIAL VALIDITY: THE CASE FOR SUBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT or HOW APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS IS FINDING ITS HEART¹

Abstract

I apologize, but I must begin making my case for subjective measurement by recounting to you my own experiences with it over the past few years. Almost a decade ago, when the field of applied behavior analysis was beginning to expand so rapidly, we were faced with the task of putting together the Journal of Applied Be- havior Analysis. For a period of several months Garth Hopkins, who was our managing editor, presented us with a series of unexpected deci- sions to make; like: What color should the paper be? And did we need a paper that would hold together for two thousand years or were we willing to live with a shelf-life of only a thousand years? And so on.