Validity Analysis of a Modified Questions About Behavioral Function (QABF) Assessment: Preliminary Analysis

The Questions About Behavioral Function (QABF) is a 25-item rating scale about the variables that are potentially maintaining problem behavior, and it is administered in an interview format to an informant. According to previous research, the psychometric soundness (such as validity) of the QABF and other indirect assessments is low, yet these instruments are used frequently in practice. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether specifying a recall period would improve the validity of the QABF (i.e., correspondence of QABF results with functional analysis results). A QABF, a modified version with timeframes (QABF-M), and a functional analysis (FA) were completed for each of five participants with developmental disabilities. Percentage correspondence between results of the QABF and FA versus the results of the QABF-M and FA were then compared. Average percentage correspondence for the original QABF, QABF-M 30-day, and the QABF-M 3-year were 20%, 40% and 40% respectively. Potential theoretical and applied implications as well as limitations are discussed