Summary: Frequency is just a count: how many times the behavior happened. Rate takes that count and divides it by how long you watched, so you get something like "3 per minute." The whole game is knowing when a raw count is honest and when it lies to you. This page walks through both, with real session examples and the distinctions the exam keeps testing.
Counting behavior sounds like the easiest thing you'll do as an RBT. Mostly it is. But the two methods you'll reach for most, frequency and rate, hide a trap that the exam loves, and that supervisors see new RBTs fall into on real sessions. Get the difference straight now and a lot of measurement questions answer themselves.
What frequency measurement is
Frequency is a count. You tally each time the target behavior happens during your observation, and the number you write down is the total. That's it. Twelve hits, twelve hand-raises, twelve mands. Twelve.
It works best when the behavior has a clean start and stop, so you can tell one instance from the next. Hand-raising is countable. So is throwing a block, saying a word, biting. A discrete event with edges.
Frequency is cheap to run. You don't need much training, you don't need a stopwatch, you just need a clear definition and something to tally with. That simplicity is also its weakness, which we'll get to.
That's the free preview of Frequency and Rate. The complete guide, plus all 851 practice questions and 3 full exams, is in the study pack and the book.