Creating Operational Definitions

Defining behavior is essential to effective instruction. Being able to define behavior helps make the learning process more likely to be successful.

Behavior is generally considered what someone does. Behavior includes what the person does that is observable and measurable. It is common to define behavior by identifying what actions the person has displayed or what actions the teacher decides that the individual should begin to display.

Behavior is typically not defined by talking about the reason behind the behavior. Behavior is not defined by identifying a person’s motivation, thoughts, or feelings for doing something.

On a side note, there is some room in a therapeutic or educational setting to address what can be referred to as “private events” which are related to what happens within a person’s body or mind.

However, for the purposes of defining behavior, we want to be careful about how we discuss private events and how we define this part of the human experience, as well.

Importance of Defining Behaviors

According to Bicard, Bicard, and the IRIS Center, defining behavior is important for many reasons including the following:

• It makes it easier to collect data about the learner either by observing them or asking someone else to report on the learner’s behavior.
• When and how often a behavior occurs is more accurately documented when the behavior has been defined.
• By defining behavior, you can optimize the available services and supports.
• Defining behavior helps the teacher to focus on the interactions between the environment and the learner rather than allowing for blame to be placed on something else such as an opinion or judgment about a potential innate flaw in the learner.
• When behavior is defined, it is easier to get others to help the learner work toward goals as the other teacher can better understand what is expected.
• Defining behavior allows for better intervention design.
• Monitoring progress and identifying true and meaningful change can be accomplished when behavior has been defined.
• Writing intervention plans, completing functional behavior assessments, and communicating with others are all supported when behavior has been properly defined.

Parts of a Behavioral Definition

To define behavior, an objective and measurable phrase is developed.

When defining behaviors, it is important to make sure that you define the behavior in observable terms. For instance, a parent who is trying to help their child “be more respectful” should not define the target behavior as “My child will be more respectful,” because the term respectful is not observable (until you further define what respectful means).

A better definition would be “My child will say ‘yes mom’ and begin completing the task within 30 seconds of being asked when I ask him to clean up his room.”

An operational definition is improved when measurable terms are used. This refers to identifying how the behavior should be measured. For instance, are you measuring how often a behavior happens in the course of a day?

Measurable terms include the dimension of the behavior to be evaluated. Examples include:

• frequency – how many times the behavior occurred
• rate – how many times in a given period the behavior occurred
• duration – how long the behavior occurred
• latency – how long between the initial SD (instruction or trigger) and the behavior
• magnitude – the intensity of the behavior

It is highly recommended that when you identify and define a behavior that you (or another significant individual) would like to see less of in the learner, that you also identify and define a replacement behavior.