The purpose of an ABC chart is to determine function of behaviour.

Note: ABC charts are not always reliable as they rely on other people’s accounts of the situation. However, they are good to get a preliminary idea of what the behaviour looks like, when it occurs, and how people are dealing with it.

Note: ABC charts should only be used for a week or so to collect data. Then move towards frequency or duration once you have the information you desire. If you use ABC charts for a longer period of time, you are going to find that data collection decreases as ABC charts can be onerous to fill out. (It’s also onerous to go through and analyze data from an ABC chart, so do yourself a favour and implement for a short period of time only)

Here’s a few different samples of ABC charts that we use.