Why Concentrated Hours for BCBA Fieldwork is so Confusing

The requirements for BCBA supervised fieldwork can be confusing, and the most difficult guidelines of all are for concentrated fieldwork. At a high level, concentrated hours allow you to work more closely with your supervising BCBA in order to finish with fewer total hours. Sounds simple? It is, but the way it is described in the BCBA handbook leads to some common misunderstandings.

How concentrated fieldwork hours is defined

Here is how the BCBA handbook describes concentrated requirements:

According to this, you can do two more observations and 5% more supervision every month to get concentrated hours. If you do that every month, you can finish your fieldwork at 1,500 total hours. The confusion I often run into with BCBA candidates is whether or not you can mix and match concentrated and non-concentrated months. This tables makes it seem like you have to pick non-concentrated or concentrated from the beginning, and then you must stick to that every month. This isn't true, and the BCBA Handbook explains it further down.

What is the 1.33x modifier anyway?

On page 20 of the BCBA handbook, it further explains how you can combine concentrated and non-concentrated months:

Combination of Fieldwork Types and Settings: Trainees may accrue hours in a single category or may combine the two types to meet the fieldwork requirement, with fieldwork hours for Concentrated Supervised Fieldwork having approximately 1.33 times the temporal value of Supervised Fieldwork. Trainees must meet all other supervision requirements independently for each fieldwork type. For example, the required supervision percentage, number of observations, and number of contacts must be met independently for each fieldwork type. Trainees must also meet the requirements for each organized fieldwork experience (i.e., for each M-FVF and F-FVF). For example, if a trainee is accruing some hours with an individual supervisor at one setting and also accruing hours at another organization where multiple supervisors are overseeing their hours, then the trainee must independently meet the requirements at both sites.

According to this, when you mix and match concentrated and non-concentrated months, the concentrated hours are worth 1.33 non-concentrated hours. That makes sense! 2,000 hours divided by 1.33 is 1,500. I've seen BCBA candidates get confused with this paragraph as well. Here is a reddit post of someone who thought they only needed to complete 1,500 hours after multiplying your concentrated hours by 1.33. Unfortunately for this person, that meant they had 250 hours left to go when they were already planning to apply to take the exam. I don't blame them. The handbook's description of concentrated hours is confusing. I don't know why they mention 1,500 hours at all. In my opinion, I would prefer to see something like this:

It's not perfect, and there may be a better way to illustrate these requirements, but at least it avoids the kind of confusion that leads people to being 250 hours off their planned completion date.

How does BCBA Hour Tracker display concentrated hours?

As the developer for a tracker, concentrated hours create a conundrum for me. I want to show all my users a plan for each month that shows them exactly what they need to do. You should be able to glance at the dashboard and know how many more hours you need to complete this month, how many of them need to be unrestricted, and how many observations you need. But when it comes to concentrated hours, it becomes more confusing. Do I show them how many "true" hours they need to complete before applying the 1.33 multiplier? What if someone gets confused and thinks those are the hours after the 1.33 multiplier? I implemented several difference versions of this, which took many, many hours of time. First, I created a toggle that allowed people to apply the 1.33 multiplier to all the numbers. But that could mislead people who haven't completed the concentrated requirements yet. I played around with different ways of displaying the data, but they all had drawbacks. Ultimately, I decided not to make the same mistake as the BCBA handbook. That means all the hours in the month are targeting the 2,000 total hours to complete, and if you complete the requirements for concentrated hours, it will automatically multiply that month's hours by 1.33.

Here is an example:

Linda needs to complete 26 hours a month to complete her fieldwork at 2,000 hours. This month, she has finished 62 "true" before 1.33 modifier. However, she has completed all the necessary requirements for concentrated hours. Accordingly, her monthly plan multiplies her hours by 1.33, showing 82 total hours, 15 supervised hours, and 37 unrestricted hours. This is what her plan looks like:

Here is a second example

Ron needs to complete 96 hours a month to complete his fieldwork at 2,000 hours. He has finished 57 hours this month, and he has not qualified yet for concentrated hours. His plan reflects this by not applying the 1.33 modifier to his target, supervised, and unrestricted hours. Here is what his plan looks like:

One exception

There is one exception to this rule. Under "Hours" at the bottom of the "This month" widget, it only displays hours before the concentrated multiplier. This is because this number is only to determine if you are above the minimum and below the maximum number of hours in a month, and this requirement only applies to "true" hours before the 1.33 modifier. To make that clear, I've labeled it "(pre-concentrated multiplier)."

If there is a better way to do this, I will change it in the future

I know this approach isn't perfect, but I've prototyped many different ways of displaying this information. After trialing this with users, this approach has the lowest opportunity for confusion. More than anything, I do not want users to think they are closer to finishing than they are. However, I am open to feedback. If you have any ideas on how to improve this, please provide feedback by clicking the link below. And if you haven't tried it yet, please sign up for BCBA Hour Tracker.