Newsletter
Volume 31 | 2008 | Number 2
Dissemination of Behavior Analysis
By Dr. Josh Pritchard
Over the past six months, the Dissemination of Behavior Analysis (DBA) SIG has grown in size, begun some initial activities, and increased online activity. The DBA established an Accurate Online Representation Committee (AORC) which consists of six volunteers. This Committee has been working to correct misinformation in the online world and has corrected three private Web sites and begun publishing, monitoring, and updating articles on Wikipedia. To date, the AORC has accrued over 1,500 edits to Wikipedia and monitors over 80 articles.
As membership grows and plans are developed, we expect more and more participation. The SIG’s agenda over the next twelve months includes the further refinement of the Web site, with development of a public and a member section. The member section will include a host of ideas/activities that any student of our science can help disseminate. The public side will have user-friendly tutorials about various topics in our science. We hope to develop a speaker’s bureau of volunteers and topics as well as a “speaker’s toolkit” for those who would like to present some of our topics. In the upcoming year, we hope to offer a free series of podcasts that incorporate humor into our science, making the content even more palatable to the lay audience. We also plan to take initial steps to collaborate with interested parties to locate non-behavioral conferences of audiences amenable to presentations introducing our science. These projects are only in their infancy, but we hope to see some considerable progress by the next ABAI convention!
The DBA SIG had a booth at the ABAI Expo in Chicago where we provided small, easily accomplished projects to further disseminate our science. One option was to sign up for the SIG. As we look to 2009, we hope to achieve a membership of over 200 behaviorists and to get several campaigns on track, including a group working in popular media to provide the public with contact to our science. This convention was a great step towards further dissemination, and we hope to see more members join to help accurately represent our science to the public.