Functional Behavioral Assessments or What’s causing the short?

Many years ago, early in my marriage, my wife and I owned a Ford Escort. It was a good car for our very young family. After about a year, we started having electrical problems. We took it back to the shop over and over again. A number of different things were replaced but the problem kept recurring. One day, someone discovered that we kept a spare key in the ash tray. That key was causing the short. As soon as we stopped keeping the spare key in the ash tray, the problem stopped, no more shorts.
Sometimes behavior problems are really that simple, sometimes they are not; however, diagnostics, until you find the problem, are essential. The more experienced I become, the more I believe that good upfront and ongoing assessments, to include functional behavioral assessments are absolutely essential. It is better to spend the time and resources finding the problem and the right solution than to skip this step and spend thousands and tens of thousands of dollars address the wrong problem or using the wrong solution (which of course, is usually not a solution at all).  (A Functional Behavioral Assessment is also called a Functional Analysis of Behavior.)




Additional Resources:
Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) and Behavior Intervention Plans (BIP)
Functional Behavioral Assessment Generator
Example of a Functional Analysis Assessment Report
FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PROBLEM BEHAVIOR: A REVIEW
Teaching Children with Autism: Functional Behavior Analysis
Free tools for Functional Behavioral Assessments, as well as other therapy tools.
Functional Behavioral Assessment
multimodal functional behavioral assessment
Functional Behavioral Assessment
An IEP Team's Introduction To Functional Behavioral Assessment And Behavior Intervention Plans (2nd edition)
Functional Behavioral Assessments: What, Why, When, Where, and Who?
Functional Behavioral Assessment