Which measurement would you use to determine how long a target behavior lasts, from start to finish?

• A. Frequency counting
• B. Duration
• C. Inter-response time
• D. Latency

Answer: (B)

Measuring how long the target behavior lasts from its start to its finish is duration. This is the time the behavior occupies from the moment it begins to the moment it ends, giving you the total engagement time for that behavior during the observation.

To collect it, time starts when the behavior begins and stops when it ends. You can record the duration in seconds or minutes and analyze it in several useful ways, such as total duration within a session, average duration per occurrence, or the proportion of the session spent exhibiting that behavior.

For example, if a student tantrums from 1:10 to 1:50, the duration is 40 seconds. If this happens multiple times, you can sum the durations or compute the mean duration per tantrum.

Why this fits best here: duration directly captures how long the behavior lasts, which is exactly what you’re trying to quantify. Other measures don’t describe length. A frequency count notes how many times the behavior occurs, not how long each instance lasts. Inter-response time measures the gap between occurrences, not how long an instance itself lasts. Latency measures the time from a cue to the start of the behavior, not the duration of the behavior once it begins.