Applied Behavior Analysis
Helping children with autism

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Preference Assessment

There are several ways to conduct a stimulus preference assessment.  You can ask the person, observe the person or present the person with stimuli and measure the response.  If you ask the person you can have them rank order the stimuli, use a choice format, or use open ended questions.  If you observe the person you can contrive the observation or use a free operant observation.  If you present stimuli and measure responses you can use a single stimulus, paired stimuli or multiple stimuli with replacement or multiple stimuli without replacement.

Why would you do a preference assessment?  One reason is you might need to identify possible reinforcers to use in an ABA program.  Another reason is you would like your son to help out a little more around the house.  During the preference assessment you might discover that your child likes going to the beach.  You could then set up a token system so that the child could earn going to the beach on Friday.