Turning Point 2 - A Call for Research on Quality Assurance in ABA Autism Service Settings: A Five-Part Series. Part 2 of 5

Turning Point Continued...Step 1: Define Quality in Terms of Its Selection

A functional account of quality assumes its selection by consequences within a macrosystem of contingencies that shape service quality (See Figure 2 in Silbaugh & El Fattal, 2022b). By means of cultural selection, an organization’s macrosystem, the broader receiving and selecting context in which the organization operates, determines its competitiveness and survival (Malott, 2022). ABA autism service organizations operate in an ABA autism services macrosystem. This macrosystem is the receiving environment which exerts control over ABA organizations’ service and product delivery, and therefore its service and product quality, by means of cultural selection (Skinner, 1981).

From this perspective, if an ABA autism service organization provides low-quality services, or provides those services without a robust quality assurance system in place, it is because the social and economic context in which the organization operates has inadvertently arranged financial contingencies for it to do so. The ABA autism services macrosystem is comprised of many extra-organizational influences on ABA service quality, some of which are listed above. Some influence quality through their effects on the workforce such as accreditation of graduate course sequences or certification of practitioners (e.g., Moore & Shook, 2001).

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