Applied behavior analysts have shown increased interest in how behavioral assessment methods (e.g., functional analysis, reinforcer assessment) may be used to increase our understanding of and ability to treat aberrant behavior. For example, one of our patients, Carly, displayed destructive behavior (aggression, disruption) that was maintained by escape, attention, and access to tangible items. She participated in an investigation on the effectiveness of combining positive and negative reinforcement in the treatment of escape-maintained behavior (Piazza et al., 1997). She also participated under a different pseudonym, Carla, in an investigation that illustrated how a modified concurrent-chains procedure could be used to evaluate client preferences for different treatment packages (Hanley, Piazza, Fisher, Contrucci, & Maglieri, 1997). Her functional analysis data were included in each investigation, not because they were the central focus of either study, but because they provided the basis for selecting the particular intervention in each investigation. Unfortunately, we did not cite the first investigation (Piazza et al.) in the second one (Hanley et al.), nor did we inform the reader that the same functional analysis appeared in both articles. In retrospect, this was a mistake. There are other examples of this occurring in JABA and elsewhere, both in articles from our program and from others, but it does not seem necessary to cite all of them for the purposes of this commentary.
There are a number of reasons why authors should acknowledge overlapping data, even if it is incidental to the central focus of the article. First, it protects authors, editors, and journals from future reproach. Second, it provides the reader with potentially important information that may influence the interpretation of the data. In the future, authors should add a statement alerting the reader when data presented in one article overlap with data in a previous article, even if the degree of overlap is minimal or the data appear in different formats (e.g., table vs. graph).
REFERENCES
Piazza, C. C., Fisher, W. W., Hanley, G.
P., Remick, M. L., Contrucci, S. A., & Aitkin, T. A. (1997).
The use of positive and negative reinforcement in the treatment
of escape-maintained destructive behavior. Journal of Applied
Behavior Analysis, 30, 279—298.
Received April 8, 1998
Final acceptance June 4, 1998 Action Editor, David P. Wacker
Editor's note. This article raises an important
issue related to the reproduction of data in JABA.
JABA follows APA standards (see Standard 6.24, Duplicate
Publication of Data, American Psychological Association Ethical
Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 1992) regarding
the reproduction of data. If an author has published reproduced
data, it is important to notify the editor so that a correction
can be published. This type of correction is needed for indexing
purposes. When notifying the editor, authors should indicate that
specified data in one article were reproduced in a second article
and should provide the relevant references.
Address
correspondence to Cathleen C. Piazza, Neurobehavioral Unit,
Kennedy Krieger Institute, 707 N. Broadway, Baltimore, Maryland
21205 (E-mail: Fisher@KennedyKrieger.org).
Hanley, G. P.,
Piazza, C. C., Fisher, W. W., Contrucci, S. A., & Maglieri,
K. A. (1997). Evaluation of client preference for function-based
treatment packages. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
30, 459—473.