What is frequency recording in ABA?
Frequency recording is counting each occurrence of a behavior, usually reported as rate - the count divided by observation time - so sessions of different lengths can be compared fairly.
The simplest question about a behavior is how often it happens, and frequency recording answers it by tallying every instance: each mand, each instance of aggression, each correctly completed problem. Divided by the time observed, the count becomes a rate - per minute or per hour - which is the comparable version of the number.
Rate matters because raw counts mislead across unequal sessions. Ten occurrences in a two-hour session and ten in a twenty-minute session are very different behaviors; five per hour versus thirty per hour says so. Any dataset mixing session lengths needs rate, not count, on the graph.
Frequency suits behaviors with a clean beginning and end and roughly uniform duration - discrete, countable events. It fits poorly when episodes vary wildly in length (one tantrum lasting an hour is not comparable to three lasting a minute) or when the behavior runs continuously; duration measures serve those better.
The practical constraint is observer bandwidth. Counting a high-rate behavior while also teaching is where paper tallies fail and where a counter that travels with the therapist - and timestamps each occurrence - earns its keep, since time-stamped records also reveal within-session patterns a bare total hides.
Frequency data feeds the most familiar clinical graphs: rates of target behavior falling as rates of replacement behavior rise. Its honesty depends on definitions - what counts as one occurrence, when one episode ends and the next begins - which is exactly what interobserver agreement checks are there to confirm.