Tilda spilled coffee on a data sheet during a supervision session. What is the appropriate action?

• A. Tilda should submit the coffee-stained paper data sheet to her supervisor during the next supervision session and resign.
• B. Tilda should notify her supervisor of the mishap and try to prevent such a fiasco in the future - perhaps by using mechanical or digital data collection systems.
• C. Tilda should try her best to estimate the client's performance on each skill target.
• D. Tilda should not record any data for that session - that would be unethical.

Answer: (B)

In ABA data collection, accuracy and data integrity are essential. When a data sheet is damaged, the appropriate move is to promptly inform the supervisor about what happened and take steps to prevent similar issues in the future. Switching to more reliable data collection methods, such as digital or mechanical systems, helps ensure data stay complete, legible, and verifiable, which supports informed decisions about the client’s progress.

This isn’t a reason to resign, and it isn’t appropriate to guess or estimate client performance when data collection is compromised. Not recording data for the session would leave decisions unsupported and undermine accountability; instead, report the incident, document any impact on the data, and implement a backup method to continue accurate data gathering.