Restricted and unrestricted hours are the two categories that every BCBA® fieldwork activity falls into, and the balance between them decides whether your hours actually count. Here is the short version: restricted hours are the direct treatment work you deliver, unrestricted hours are the analytic and professional work around it, and at least 60 percent of your total fieldwork has to be unrestricted. Get that balance wrong and you can reach the finish line only to find that some of your hours do not qualify.
This guide explains what each category includes, why the same activity can land in either one, how the 60 percent rule is measured, and the recent change that affects every hour you log.
The quick answer
Under both the current and 2027 BACB® standards, a BCBA® trainee must complete at least 60 percent of total supervised fieldwork hours as unrestricted activities. For BCaBA® candidates, the threshold is 40 percent.
- Restricted activities are the hands-on delivery of behavior-analytic services: running sessions and implementing treatment plans.
- Unrestricted activities are most of the rest of what a behavior analyst does: assessment, program design, analyzing data, training others, and meeting with your own supervisor.
The category an activity belongs to is not always fixed. It depends on what the work is for, which is where most of the confusion starts.
What counts as restricted
Restricted activities are direct implementation. This is the treatment delivery work: running a client’s session, implementing the programs another analyst designed, and collecting data as part of that ongoing treatment.
For many trainees, especially those working as a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT®) while accruing hours, restricted activities make up the bulk of the workday. That is normal and expected early on. The rule is not that restricted work is lesser. It is simply that the BACB® wants most of your fieldwork to reflect the broader analytic role you are training to step into.
What counts as unrestricted
Unrestricted activities are the behavior-analytic work that goes beyond direct treatment delivery. The BACB® includes a wide range here:
- Conducting assessments
- Designing programs and treatment plans
- Analyzing and graphing data
- Writing reports
- Training and supervising staff
- Parent and caregiver training
- Supervision meetings with your own supervisor
- Research relevant to a specific client’s case
If you are doing the thinking, planning, and analysis that defines the behavior analyst role rather than carrying out a plan that already exists, you are usually in unrestricted territory.
Restricted vs. unrestricted at a glance
| Activity | Typical category |
|---|---|
| Running a client’s treatment session | Restricted |
| Collecting data during ongoing treatment | Restricted |
| Conducting a functional assessment | Unrestricted |
| Designing or revising a treatment plan | Unrestricted |
| Graphing and analyzing client data | Unrestricted |
| Training staff or caregivers | Unrestricted |
| Your supervision meeting with your supervisor | Unrestricted |
Why the same activity can count either way
This is the part that surprises people. Some activities are restricted or unrestricted depending on their purpose, not their surface description.
The BACB®’s own example is data collection. Collecting data during a client’s running treatment program is restricted, because it is part of delivering that treatment. Collecting data as part of a functional assessment, where the goal is to design future programming, is unrestricted, because the work is analytic rather than delivery.
The activity looks identical from across the room. What changes the category is the reason you are doing it. When you are unsure which bucket something belongs in, that is a conversation to have with your supervisor. The two of you decide together, and a quick note about the purpose makes the call defensible later.
How the 60 percent rule is actually measured
Here is the single most important thing to understand, because it is also the most commonly misunderstood: the 60 percent unrestricted requirement is measured cumulatively across your full fieldwork experience, not month by month.
That means you can have a month that is 100 percent restricted and another that is 100 percent unrestricted. Neither one is a problem on its own. What matters is that when you reach the end of your fieldwork, at least 60 percent of your total hours land in the unrestricted column.
This is the opposite of how the supervision percentage works, and mixing the two up causes real anxiety. Your monthly supervision percentage is measured per supervisory period, which is one calendar month, and a shortfall in one month cannot be averaged away by a stronger month later. The unrestricted ratio is the reverse: it is a running total you balance over the whole experience.
A simple way to hold both in your head:
- Supervision percentage: a monthly checkpoint.
- Unrestricted ratio: a cumulative finish line.
Early in fieldwork, when most of your hours are direct implementation, it is common to sit below 60 percent unrestricted. That is not a red flag. It is a number to watch and steer toward over time as you take on more assessment, planning, and analysis.
The August 2025 rule that affects every hour
In an August 2025 update to the Handbook, the BACB® clarified that all fieldwork activities, restricted or unrestricted, must be tied to a specific client. Work on hypothetical, generic, or fictional cases does not count.
In practice, this means your program design, reading, and analysis need to connect to actual clients you are involved with. A treatment plan you draft as a general exercise is not countable. The same plan, written for a real client on your caseload, is.
What never counts, in either category
Some activities do not count as fieldwork at all, no matter how they are framed. These include:
- Attending conferences, workshops, or university courses
- Completing course assignments, homework, and readings
- Studying for the BCBA® exam
- Nonbehavioral administrative tasks such as scheduling, billing, and preparing materials
- Nonbehavioral trainings such as CPR or crisis management
- Meetings with little or no behavior-analytic content
These hours matter to your development and your job. They simply are not fieldwork hours in the eyes of the BACB®, so logging them as such only inflates a number that will not hold up.
Keeping the split straight without doing the math by hand
The categories are learnable, but tracking the running ratio across hundreds or thousands of hours, while also watching your monthly supervision percentage, is a lot to carry in a spreadsheet.
As you log hours in ABA Fieldwork Tracker, you can see your restricted and unrestricted split in real time, so you always know where you stand against the 60 percent threshold rather than discovering a gap near the end. We show you the numbers. The judgment calls, like whether a given activity was analytic or delivery, stay with you and your supervisor, which is exactly where they belong.
See your restricted and unrestricted split in real time.
ABA Fieldwork Tracker shows your running hour categories as you log, so you always know where you stand against the 60 percent rule. Free to register, with no ads.
Key takeaways
- At least 60 percent of BCBA® fieldwork hours must be unrestricted (40 percent for BCaBA® candidates), under both the current and 2027 standards.
- Restricted is direct treatment delivery. Unrestricted is assessment, design, analysis, training, and your own supervision.
- The same activity can be either, depending on its purpose. Data collection is the classic example.
- The 60 percent rule is cumulative across your whole experience. The supervision percentage is monthly. Do not confuse the two.
- Since August 2025, every activity must tie to a specific client.
- Some activities, like coursework and exam study, never count at all.
The earlier you understand the split, the easier it is to steer toward it. A month or two of mostly restricted work is normal. The goal is a healthy cumulative balance by the time you submit. If you are still sorting out which rule set applies to you, our guide to the 2022 vs. 2027 BACB standards covers what changed. And when you are ready, registration is free.
ABA Fieldwork Tracker is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board®. Always consult the current BACB® Handbook and your supervisor for authoritative guidance on fieldwork requirements.