What are Data (Measurement) Artifacts? (ABA Terms) (BCBA Exam Prep)

Study Notes That Accompany Video

In this brief blog article, we will explore and define what a data artifact is.

A data artifact is something that, “appears to exist because of the way that it is measured” (Cooper, Heron and Heward, 2007).

A Data artifact refers to a behavior that looks like it occurs more or less often than it actually occurred as a result of the way in which the behavior is measured. It does not refer to data being inaccurate or that it wasn’t measured correctly. It means the measure itself was flawed.

The most accurate form of data for measuring how often a behavior occurs is rate data. Rate data tells you how many times a behavior occurs per time. For example, Angelina gets out of her seat 7 times per hour.

Sometimes, you cannot measure rate because a behavior occurs at a very high rate or because of limiting factors. In the example with Angelina getting her seat out of her classroom, the teacher’s ability to measure Angelina’s behavior would be constrained because her teacher must pay attention to all the kids in the classroom.

When this occurs you would want to use an interval based procedure. There are three types of interval measurements: whole interval recording, partial interval recording and momentary time sampling. All three measurements yield an approximation percentage of the time the behavior occurred in a given time period. The problem is there is a risk with all three measures of over or underestimating how often a behavior occurs especially when intervals are longer. When this happens, there is a data (also known as a measurement) artifact.

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