What is a functional analysis?
This may be your first question.
A functional analysis is an experimental method to determine how environmental variables impact the behavior of interest. It is experimental in the sense that you deploy purposeful strategies or observe key environmental changes to figure out how and when a behavior will occur. The goal is to identify which contingencies (or reasons) are around us that maintain our health and fitness behaviors.
Take walking for example
Let’s say that we want to better understand what environmental conditions will lead to higher levels of daily walking.
Imagine Wally. He measures walking via step counts with his FitBit worn his wrist. Each day that the FitBit is worn results in X number steps taken / day.
Here is what they may look like:
Some days Wally walks more, some days less.
What gives?
Now for purposeful analysis and experimentation…
Again, the task is determine what changes – in Wally’s World – to increase physical activity relative to the other conditions. As we are in the middle of a pandemic (blog written November 2020), these conditions are relatable to all.
Wally experiences these conditions:
- Baseline – Normal life
- Pandemic – Gym Shutdown
- Pandemic – Gym Opened Up
- Treadmill purchased for home – Wally bought a treadmill during Summer 2020
- Traveling – Wally traveled for personal reasons
Across these conditions, we can compare conditions to one another. That is, we compare how Wally’s steps per day are affected when gyms are closed versus traveling….or really any combination.
To determine a functional relation, you have to reliably see steps change when the conditions change
Let’s take a took at a hypothetical example:
In this chart, the baseline condition resulted in Wally’s lowest daily steps. The treadmill conditions resulted in the highest daily steps. The gyms opening and closing had little-to-no effect on daily steps. Because the step counts reliably changed during the treadmill condition, we can infer a functional relation.
When Wally was home and the treadmill was in working condition, THAT environmental change produced the highest daily step counts
Functional relations in everyday life
Your goals may not be related to walking, the pandemic, or health and fitness at all. This approach, a functional analysis, offers scientific way to unpack the chaos, mystery, and confusions for most health and fitness behaviors.
Looking into the world around us (clears throat….the environment), gives us a sense of why health and fitness changes are more likely, less likely, or do not change at all.
Like Wally, you can measure a health behavior, analyze relative conditions, and figure out how your environment brings you closer to your goals.
Keep moving.
