Haven Niland, PhD, BCBA-D
Dr. Haven Niland is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education and The Burkhart Center for Autism Education and Research at Texas Tech University. She is a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst-Doctoral with over 13 years of experience in applied behavior analysis and intervention for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Niland is currently the co-director of the Children’s Autism Program at the Burkhart Center, where she supervises BCBAs and graduate students in applied research. Dr. Niland’s primary research interests include conceptual and applied research topics in verbal behavior, behavioral assessment and skill acquisition interventions for children with ASD, applications of technology to improve supervision and service delivery, measuring and improving procedural fidelity, and reducing disparities in access to behavioral intervention.
Jennifer Hamrick, PhD, BCBA-D
Dr. Jennifer Hamrick is an Associate Professor at Texas Tech University and serves as the Jere Lynn Burkhart Endowed Regents Professor and Director of the Burkhart Center for Autism Education and Research. She is a certified teacher and Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) with more than 18 years of experience in special education, including extensive work in large public school districts overseeing educational programming for self-contained special education classrooms across multiple campuses. Her primary scholarly and professional focus is staff training, grounded in the belief that high-quality training is essential for treatment integrity and positive student outcomes. Her research also emphasizes the social validity of interventions commonly used with individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Dr. Hamrick has secured more than $3 million in grant funding to support professional development and training initiatives for public school educators serving students with developmental disabilities.
Lin Pi, M.Ed., BCBA
Lin Pi is a doctoral student in special education at Texas Tech University, specializing in Applied Behavior Analysis. As a graduate research assistant at the Burkhart Center for Autism Education & Research, her work centers on early intervention strategies to enhance communication skills in children with autism. Beyond her research, she is a practicing BCBA providing focused ABA services to support the developmental needs of young learners and their families.
Iva Fuentes, BA
Iva Fuentes is a graduate research assistant at the Burkhart Center for Autism Education and Research, a registered behavior technician, and a master’s student in special education (ABA concentration) at Texas Tech University. In her role, Iva supported the CES project implementation and evaluation.
Community engaged scholarship (CES) involves conducting applied research in collaboration with community participants. Vargas et al. (2012) defines CES as ‘action research’ in which members of the community who will be directly impacted by the work within are directly part of the research being conducted. In doing so, the activities completed through CES don’t just identify deficits in community resources available to its members, but also provide an outlet to act and attempt to mitigate them. Additionally, opportunities for learning for researchers that include graduate students who are part of the research team are a critical component of CES. Students gain a deeper understanding of the community members’ lived experiences while also learning to appreciate and provide culturally sensitive services. This allows for a better understanding of community needs while gaining practical knowledge and experience through the collaborative learning CES can provide (Plessas et al., 2024).
CES contrasts with traditional applied research methods, where the research questions, methods, and goals are developed by the researcher without consulting the community that is the subject of that research. There are times when one method of research is more appropriate than the other; however, increasing CES will support the growth and development of applied behavior analysis (ABA) as a science that actually helps people solve problems that need addressing (Bahry et al., 2022; Spencer et al., 2026). Sometimes also called participatory action research, CES is at the heart of ABA, which seeks to address social challenges that are important to its recipients using methods that are acceptable to them and judging the success of outcomes alongside them (Wolf, 1987).
Why Community Engaged Scholarship Matters in Verbal Behavior
Verbal behavior is inherently social. At its most basic levels, verbal behavior includes foundational skills for survival, autonomy, and relationship building. For example, eye contact can capture and sustain the attention of others, while basic gestures, words, or simple phrases allow individuals to engage in back-and-forth (i.e., reciprocal) verbal exchanges with others to access basic needs, desires, and navigate their environments. Intermediate and advanced verbal behavior (e.g., conversational turn-taking, socially responsive language) supports the establishment and maintenance of socially meaningful relationships. These skills not only facilitate communication with others, but they also shape one’s participation in school, family, community, workplaces, and ultimately influence the quality of life for individuals and those around them.
Because verbal behavior exists in nearly every part of daily life, efforts to build and expand verbal behavior repertoires often align with the goals of the non-scientific community. However, caregivers, teachers, employers, and other community members rarely seek support in teaching “mands”, “intraverbals”, “echoics”, etc. Instead, they seek support in asking nicely, making friends, participating in community groups, succeeding in job interviews, expressing emotions safely, and advocating for oneself. Research in verbal behavior is most meaningful when it is grounded in socially validated goals for the community it intends to serve.
Historically, verbal behavior research has focused on identifying effective and efficient methods to teach language, particularly for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (e.g., Sherman, 1964; Sundberg & Michael, 2001). There has been a strong concentration of work in autism due to the social communication differences outlined in the diagnostic criteria (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). Research has succeeded in developing instructional technologies, assessments, and decision-making tools that have proven to make meaningful change. However, translating these technologies into communities will require active partnerships with participants and stakeholders. CES provides a framework for ensuring that verbal behavior interventions are feasible, acceptable, and sustainable outside of the laboratory or intervention space.
What Community Engaged Scholarship Looks Like in Practice
CES involves developing and sustaining collaborative partnerships between researchers and members of a community that may be most likely to be impacted by their research. CES includes members of the community, and in this case, individuals with autism and their caretakers, including their teachers, who do not have access to typical ABA services or training due to a lack of or limited resources and/or funding. Community partners are usually not members of the scientific community but rather families, teachers, and students. For this, Spencer et al. (2026) proposed the term interpartner.
Collaborative interpartner relationships are most successful when the researcher prioritizes establishing trust and project goals that benefit both partners. Researchers build trust with partners by proactively ensuring that scholarly activities are planned and executed with the community rather than on the community. In this arrangement, both partners can make or influence decisions throughout the project.
The CES process of identifying and prioritizing shared goals, procedures, and outcomes closely mirrors the three levels of social validity described by Wolf (1987). Community members may be skeptical of researchers’ motives, and as a result, researchers should spend time understanding what the community values and needs to inform the project. Continuous communication and transparency early in the project activities, typically involving interpartner planning meetings and openness to changes when new information is received, can help address these concerns.
Joint data collection and analysis are also CES methods that enrich what new information is gleaned from individual projects and how outcomes are evaluated. Researchers in ABA often bring a wealth of expertise in measurement and data analysis, and our emphasis on single-subject analyses may foster collaboration with interpartners on what information to collect and when.
Finally, a sustainability plan and capacity building strategies are at the forefront for CES (Horowitz et al., 2009). Successful collaborative relationships extend beyond the life of a single project and support community partners in integrating generated technologies or improvement methods over time. Developing these long-term partnerships requires resources and planning and may introduce additional challenges (described below).
Case Study: Social Communication Skills Summer Camp
We now present one example of CES that was a five-day summer camp focused on training public educators to implement instructional strategies to teach social communication skills to school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The research goals were to understand the efficacy, feasibility, and social validity of the training format for teachers in learning communication training strategies and their related impacts on child communication.
The first and second authors of this blog post were the faculty researchers leading the project, along with a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) and a former public educator who served as camp coordinator. Further, ABA graduate students supported the coordinator and served as hands-on trainers. The project interpartners included caregivers of the 12 children who participated (i.e., campers), the campers themselves, and six teachers who attended the training. As an early step towards CES, this project served as a launching point for future projects with expanded collaboration.
The context for this project is a university-based autism education and research center in a rural, southwestern region of the United States that has multiple clinical service lines to support children and adults with ASD. In rural areas of the United States, children and families have limited access to behavior analysts to receive verbal behavior intervention, making public schools a common setting for instruction on these skills (Hamrick et al., 2025; Yingling et al., 2022). Likewise, general or special educators have access to fewer resources to receive technical training or professional development in supporting students who need to enhance their verbal skills. This project developed out of a need for the community of school-aged children with ASD in rural areas to receive instruction in verbal behavior and for public educators to access professional development opportunities for teaching those skills.
To protect participant privacy, most of our collaborative planning activities were conducted with families and teachers separately. All caregivers and campers participated in semi-structured planning meetings with at least two members of the center project team to understand their child’s current educational placements, develop goals for social communication (e.g., increase rate of independent 1 to 2-word communication attempts), and choose preferred activities. Under the supervision of BCBAs on staff, ABA graduate students used this information to draft individualized action plans for campers to meet their communication goals and choose activities that the campers would be excited about during camp. Caregivers were given a copy of the proposed action plans for review and approval or feedback prior to camp. Additionally, caregivers were invited to attend the final day of camp where they received training on the target strategies and observed their child and assigned teacher interacting.
Teachers were involved in planning the structure, data collection, and goals of camp. The camp coordinator met with the teachers to learn about their current classroom and professional development goals. We used that information to draft the procedures and materials for training and data collection. For example, one teacher requested to gain experience teaching a child how to use a speech-generating device. When possible, teachers were intentionally paired with campers who were matched in age and communication goals to students in their regular classrooms. We used a checklist-style data collection system with written and verbal feedback that was more like what the teachers experienced in their daily work. Additionally, we scheduled the camp to take place during the summer months to accommodate teachers’ availability.
On Day 1, teachers participated in a meet-and-greet with their assigned campers and an information session led by the camp coordinator, which covered the description and rationale of targeted teaching strategies, functions of behavior, and the data collection system. On Days 2-5, we implemented hands-on training in a large-group classroom, playground/gym, and small group classrooms to mimic the environments where teachers were most likely to interact with students. As teachers and campers rotated through activities, we observed their interactions, collected data on teacher and camper responding, provided positive and corrective feedback on a 2:1 ratio, and practiced target strategies with feedback. At the end of each day, the center project team and teachers met as a group to discuss successes and necessary changes to improve the next camp day. On the final day of camp, faculty members met individually with each teacher to review the data collected throughout the week, provide positive feedback, and discuss potential goals or changes for the final day of camp.
The planning process, from recruitment to project initiation, took approximately 6 months. This gave the research team enough time to work with families, teachers, and campers identify the goals and strategies to build functional verbal behavior that would extend beyond camp. Our sustainability plan was somewhat limited because teachers signed up for training individually and not as part of a larger collaboration with their school districts. This limited our ability to implement training with teachers in their home schools the following school year. However, all teachers were invited by faculty researchers to request follow-up training and consultation as needed. To further support sustainability, we gave each teacher books and materials to implement teaching and data collection based on ABA valued at over $1000.00, and a copy of the group training slideshow.
Key Takeaways
Our case study highlights several broadly applicable strategies to implement CES in a variety of settings. Regardless of topic, early and ongoing involvement of interpartners to identify meaningful goals and support social validity is central to success. Engaging stakeholders (i.e., families, teachers, students) through structured planning and maintaining open communication throughout implementation allows intervention approaches to remain responsive and feasible.
Behavior change interventions are strengthened when they are developed with interpartners and adapted to meet their needs, daily routines, and environments. Conducting training in natural environments with supports like performance feedback and coaching can help support skill acquisition and application across contexts. Matching procedures for data collection to community and research needs can be challenging but supports meaningful project evaluation and research.
CES also emphasizes ongoing improvement and data-based decision making. This case study was one of numerous iterations of a teacher-training summer camp focused on communication training. Regular opportunities to review progress and make adjustments with interpartners can build trust and improve outcomes. The best versions of CES that maximize impact and scholarship may require multiple approximations toward those goals.
Finally, sustainability planning should occur as early as possible. Opportunities for continued collaboration and support can help interpartners maintain and extend the project’s impacts. When those opportunities do not exist, as in our case, where interpartners were working within school systems that prevented formal project continuation, training in context and providing resources and materials may still support long-term success.
Challenges and How We Navigated Them
From a practical perspective, CES comes with numerous challenges, including significant planning time and resources (e.g., monetary, material, and physical infrastructure). We planned and executed a week-long training for teachers at our university-based autism center. Verbal behavior researchers interested in CES must identify potential partners in their communities and begin developing relationships with them. Common methods of doing this include reaching out to potential partners to introduce yourself in plain language and offer something that may be immediately valuable to them. For example, researchers may host a community outreach event and invite stakeholders and potential partners to participate with free advertising. We connected with camp interpartners through social media posts and word-of-mouth connections through an established community advisory board at the center. Once the relationship is established, a formal or informal needs assessment can help to learn what members of the community need.
Our summer camp project has evolved over numerous years of similar events that are improved upon each year with growth and increased collaboration. The feedback we received each year during and after camp has helped us be better collaborators and identify new interpartners. Continued improvement has helped our center establish authentic and trusting partnerships with community members.
Participating teachers needed the time, money, and travel accommodations to attend the camp. The university autism center where the training occurred has dedicated funding for teacher training and summer camp for children with ASD, both supported by donors with interests in those areas. By combining these two funding sources, we were able to provide a weekly stipend for teachers to attend and receive copies of resources utilized for training and programming for camp. All children attending the camp were able to attend for free. Additionally, grant funding specific to parent training was used to provide both group and 1:1 parent training for caregivers on the last day of camp.
Successful CES requires a balance between scientific rigor and service needs. Once the camp structure was developed, the research team created action steps to ensure research standards (e.g., reliability data collection) were implemented during camp. All supporting graduate students attended pre-camp training to ensure fidelity of training implementation and acquired supervision fieldwork hours for appropriate activities. While resource intensive, CES not only expands the impact of scholarship for communities, but it also expands options for publication outlets, enhancing dissemination of ABA research.
Implications for the Field of Verbal Behavior
Much of the research in verbal behavior has been conducted in laboratory or clinical settings with intervention plans drafted by researchers or BCBAs. While research in ABA service delivery may involve elements of CES, it often lacks a clear connection to the components of CES (da Cruz, 2018). CES scales verbal behavior research by transitioning interventions into sustainable community infrastructure. Reciprocal partnerships with schools and local organizations help researchers move beyond individual case studies toward broader implementation (e.g., Shillingsburg et al., 2021). This collaborative approach identifies real-world systemic variables, like training needs and cultural nuances, that refine the social validity and feasibility of protocols. Ultimately, CES ensures that evidence-based verbal behavior practices are implemented and evaluated across diverse populations and public systems, therefore enhancing the external validity of research.
CES provides behavior analysts with an enriched collaborative working environment where they can embrace research ideas from various interpartners. This two-way interprofessional collaboration, noted by Spencer et al. (2026), promotes co-learning experiences, shared goals, and client-centered approaches in service delivery. For the field of applied behavior analysis, CES may function as a vehicle for researchers to disseminate their findings to individuals from outside the field and increase various community groups’ contact with behavior analytic practices (Call et al., 2025).
ABA teachers and mentors are responsible for designing learning environments that emphasize the importance of social validity. Integrating training on CES helps students learn practical steps to conduct applied research alongside community members. For example, in our case study, graduate students actively participated in caregiver meetings, modeled interventions and provided performance feedback to teachers, and collected data on both teachers’ and students’ behaviors. This CES practice supported early-career scholars to actively engage and manage a CES project. In this process, graduate students, faculty, and community groups (i.e., teachers, caregivers, and children with autism) collaboratively investigate refined methods for improving communication skills in students with autism.
A Call to Action for Verbal Behavior Researchers
The social nature and societal importance of verbal behavior means that researchers in this area are positioned to take up CES for the betterment of communities and enhanced social validity of the science. We encourage readers to identify one way to increase community engagement in their own work to maximize impact.
Opportunities for engagement extend beyond populations of individuals with ASD. Verbal behavior researchers have the potential to impact and collaborate with a variety of populations and contexts, including geriatrics, dementia, or traumatic brain injury (Oleson & Baker, 2014; Heinicke & Carr, 2014); sensory disabilities (Toussaint et al., 2017); practitioners and educators (Shillingsburg et al., 2021); interactions of larger verbal communities (Cox, 2026); and engagement with large language models (Cox & Jennings, 2023). Expanding community engagement in verbal behavior research will support the relevance and application of the science of behavior analysis.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596
Bahry, S., Gerhardt, P. F., Weiss, M. J., Leaf, J. B., Putnam, R. F., & Bondy, A. (2022). The ethics of actually helping people: Targeting skill acquisition goals that promote meaningful outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 16(3), 672–695. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-022-00757-x
Call, N. A., Williams, C. L., Mevers, J. L., & Argueta, T. (2025). Scholarship as an operant class: Strategies and tactics for increasing dissemination of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 58(4), 668–686. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.70028
Cox, D. J. (2026). Verbal frontiers: Combining words in the wild, computational modeling, and behavior analysis to explore verbal communities. Perspectives on Behavior Science, 49, 201-232. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-025-00484-y
Cox, D. J., & Jennings, A. M. (2023). The promises and possibilities of artificial intelligence in the delivery of behavior analytic services. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 17(1), 123–136. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-023-00864-3
da Cruz, C. (2018). Community-engaged scholarship: Toward a shared understanding of practice. The Review of Higher Education, 41(2), 147–167. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2018.0000
Hamrick, J., Prueitt, N., & Favela, A. (2025). Supporting special education practice for students with ASD in rural districts. In J. P. Bakken (Ed.), Handbook for educating students with disabilities: Implications and strategies (pp. 89–124). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60258-0_5
Heinicke, M. R., & Carr, J. E. (2014). Applied behavior analysis in acquired brain injury rehabilitation: A meta-analysis of single-case design intervention research. Behavioral Interventions, 29(2), 77–105. https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.1380
Horowitz, C. R., Robinson, M., & Seifer, S. (2009). Community-based participatory research from the margin to the mainstream: Are researchers prepared? Circulation, 119(19), 2633–2642. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.729863
Oleson, C. R., & Baker, J. C. (2014). Teaching mands to older adults with dementia. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 30(2), 113–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-014-0018-7
Plessas, A., Paisi, M., Ahmed, N., Brookes, Z., Burns, L., & Witton, R. (2024). The impact of community engaged healthcare education on undergraduate students’ empathy and their views towards social accountability; a mixed methods systematic review. BMC Medical Education, 24, 1490. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-06367-1
Sherman, J. A. (1964). Modification of nonverbal behavior through reinforcement of related verbal behavior. Child Development, 35(3), 717. https://doi.org/10.2307/1126497
Shillingsburg, M. A., Frampton, S. E., Juban, B., Weddle, S. A., & Silva, M. R. (2021). Implementing an applied verbal behavior model in classrooms. Behavioral Interventions, 37(1), 56-78. https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.1807
Spencer, T. D., Thompson, V., & Watson-Thompson, J. (2026). Community-engaged scholarship: An interpartner approach for collaborative practice. Behavior and Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-025-00239-z
Sundberg, M. L., & Michael, J. (2001). The benefits of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior for children with autism. Behavior Modification, 25(5), 698–724. https://doi.org/10.1177/0145445501255003
Toussaint, K. A., Scheithauer, M. C., Tiger, J. H., & Saunders, K. J. (2017). Teaching identity matching of braille characters to beginning braille readers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 50(2), 278–289. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.382
Vargas, C. M., Arauza, C., Folsom, K., Luna, M. del R., Gutiérrez, L., Frerking, P. O., Shelton, K., Foreman, C., Waffle, D., Reynolds, R., … Cooper, P. J. (2012). A community engagement process for families with children with disabilities: Lessons in leadership and policy. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 16(1), 21–30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-010-0666-8
Wolf M. M. (1978). Social validity: the case for subjective measurement or how applied behavior analysis is finding its heart. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 11(2), 203–214. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1978.11-203
Yingling, M. E., Ruther, M. H., & Dubuque, E. M. (2022). Trends in Geographic Access to Board Certified Behavior Analysts Among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, 2018-2021. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 52(12), 5483–5490. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05402-0