The Association for Behavior Analysis International has grown into quite the behemoth. It began as the Midwestern Association for Behavior Analysis, whose inaugural gathering in 1974 attracted about 90 people. It soon dropped the regional qualifier to become the Association for Behavior Analysis, and later added the designation “International.” In its current iteration as the world’s largest behavior analysis member organization, ABAI subsumes thousands of members and has its fingers in just about every behavior analysis pie imaginable, from conferences to journals to graduate program accreditation to continuing education and much more. In this sense ABAI is kind of a big deal.
For those of us who belong to ABAI and participate in its various initiatives, it’s easy to forget that there’s a world outside of ABAI. By that I mean that behavior analysis exists outside of ABAI and also that there is a world outside of behavior analysis. To explore this point, below I drew on data from Google Trends, which shows how often users of the Google Chrome browser conduct internet searchers for various things. To warm you up, here is the Google search activity for “Association for Behavior Analysis International” from the past 20 years or so (see About the Data, below).
Below, you’ll find — sans commentary — comparisons of this result with, well, a whole bunch of stuff. I’m neither picking on nor promoting ABAI, only pushing the notion that we need to periodically examine what we’re accomplishing as a discipline in the context of a broad societal milieu. Whether collectively we’re society’s darling or nobody knows we exist or people know but hate us, it’s useful to have a realistic sense of where behavior analysis is in its developmental trajectory. Societal reactions to our discipline are somebody’s behavior, and we’re all about behavior change, right?. But of course what we do as behavior analysts is supposed to be data driven, and you can’t get to someplace better until you know where you currently stand.
Make what you will of the data shown below and, what the heck, for additional perspective try using Trends to conduct a few of your own comparisons to see how how much societal interest your favorite behavior analysis topic or institution attracts.
About the Data
- Observation window is January 1, 2004 through December 1, 2025. Rather arbitrarily, I examined data on U.S. searches only, but Trends lets you focus on other nations or on world searches overall. FWIW worldwide data tend to mirror U.S. data because the U.S. has so many Google users.
- Trends can break search data down in ways other than geographically, but I used the most inclusive approach.
- Trends reports relative rather than absolute data. For instance, in the above graph, data points show search interest for “ABAI” relative to peak interest during the reporting window. When comparing two or more search terms, all data points are scaled relative to the same peak outcome. For more on how Trends works, see here.
- In the present graphs, the “Note” annotation shows where Google made tweaks to its data collection methods; if you’re interested in specifics go into Trends and click on the Notes for yourself..
— ABAI and Some Other Organizations Related to Behavior Analysis —
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Association for Professional Behavior Analysts (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. CALABA (California Association for Behavior Analysis; orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Behavior Analyst Certification Board (orange)
— ABAI and Some Other Organizations —
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. American Psychological Association (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Association for Psychological Science (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. American Association for the Advancement of Science (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. American Chemical Society (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. American Quilters Society (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. National Rifle Association (orange)
— ABAI and Autism —
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Autism Society of America (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Autism Self Advocacy Network (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Autism Speaks (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. National Autism Association (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Temple Grandin (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. The Good Doctor (TV series; orange)
— ABAI and Selected Humility Prompts —
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Arsenal Football Club (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Flossing (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. French press coffee (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Pumpkin pie (orange)
Association for Behavior Analysis International (blue) vs. Iguanas (orange)
THEME MUSIC