Contact Requirement

The contact requirement specifies the minimum number of supervision contacts — distinct, scheduled interactions between you and your supervisor — that must occur each month. Under the 2022 standards, supervised fieldwork requires at least 4 contacts per month, and concentrated fieldwork requires at least 6. This was one of the more administratively demanding requirements because it required careful counting and documentation of each qualifying interaction.

A qualifying contact must be a substantive, purposeful supervision interaction. Brief check-ins, informal hallway conversations, and administrative communications generally do not count. Each contact should involve discussion of clinical cases, review of data, feedback on your performance, or other activities directly related to your professional development as a behavior analyst.

The 2027 standards eliminated the contact requirement entirely. This is one of the most significant changes in the updated rules and represents a philosophical shift: rather than prescribing a minimum number of interactions, the BACB now relies on the supervision percentage and observation requirements to ensure adequate supervisor engagement. For candidates under 2022 standards, the contact requirement remains in effect and must be tracked carefully. Missing even one contact in a month — logging only 3 instead of the required 4 — results in a compliance failure for that supervision period.