Reference
The RBT Test Content Outline (3rd ed.): all 43 tasks, in plain English
Every task in BACB's current outline, in plain English, with the published question count for each area.
The RBT task list is now published under a different name — the RBT Test Content Outline (3rd ed.) — and it lists 43 tasks across six content areas. All 43 are below, one line each, with the number of scored questions BACB publishes for every area.
This page is the reference: what the document says and how it is put together. It does not tell you what to study first. That argument belongs to the RBT study guide, which takes the same six areas and puts them in an order.
43
tasks
in 6 content areas
75
scored questions
plus 10 unscored pilot items
3rd
edition
supersedes the 2nd-edition Task List
Reference
Use it as an index
Jump straight to an area, or read the edition change at the bottom of the page.
Provenance
What the document actually is
It is the output of a job task analysis — BACB surveyed the work behavior technicians actually do, and the outline is what came back. The board describes it as the content that appears on the RBT certification examination beginning in 2026, and it supersedes the 2nd-edition Task List.
The part worth pausing on is the table on its first page. BACB prints a question count per content area, not a vague weighting and not nothing at all — 13, 8, 19, 14, 10 and 11, adding to the 75 scored questions. Publishing that is unusual, and it means the shape of this exam is not a matter of opinion.
Two more properties of the document decide how you should read it. Every question is weighted the same, so an area's item count is the whole of its importance (why that follows). And the outline describes content, not procedure: the path to sitting the exam at all, from training through the competency assessment to the application, is laid out on the RBT certification page.
Six areas, 43 tasks, 75 scored questions and a published count for each area. That is the entire document — and it is the only weighting on this exam that is not somebody's guess.
The blueprint
The six content areas, and what each one is worth
| Area | Content area | Tasks | Scored questions | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
A | Data Collection and Graphing | A.1-A.8 | 13 | 17% |
B | Behavior Assessment | B.1-B.3 | 8 | 11% |
C | Behavior Acquisition | C.1-C.11 | 19 | 25% |
D | Behavior Reduction | D.1-D.7 | 14 | 19% |
E | Documentation and Reporting | E.1-E.4 | 10 | 13% |
F | Ethics | F.1-F.10 | 11 | 15% |
Seventy-five scored questions in total, plus 10 unscored pilot questions. The percentages are BACB's own and are explicitly rounded.
Area C is the biggest block in the outline at 19 scored questions and area B the smallest at 8, and the gap between them is wider than most study material admits. Turning those counts into an order to work through is the study guide's job; this page stops at reporting them.
13 of 75 scored items · 17%
Area A — Data Collection and Graphing
Area A is the measurement half of the job: how you count behavior, how you turn counts into a number somebody else can read, and what happens when either step is sloppy. Eight tasks, 13 scored items. Two of the eight, A.5 and A.8, are written as describe rather than implement — the outline's way of saying the question will be about the concept, not the procedure.
| Task | What the outline asks of you | Terms it names |
|---|---|---|
A.1 | Take data continuously: every instance, as it happens. The four measures differ in what they count — how many, how long, how long until it starts, how long between two instances. | frequency, duration, latency, interresponse time (IRT) |
A.2 | Take data by sampling time instead of catching every instance, using the interval method the plan specifies. | partial interval, whole interval, momentary time sampling |
A.3 | Measure what the behavior left behind rather than the behavior itself. | permanent product recording |
A.4 | Get the numbers off the sheet and into the system, and keep the graph current. | data entry, updating graphs |
A.5 | Write behavior and environment so that a second observer would count the same thing you counted. | observable terms, measurable terms |
A.6 | Turn raw counts into the summary figure the team actually reads. | rate, mean duration, percentage |
A.7 | Look at a graph and say which way the data are moving. | trends in graphed data |
A.8 | Describe what goes wrong downstream when the data are unreliable or the procedure is not run as written. | unreliable data collection, procedural fidelity |
8 of 75 scored items · 11%
Area B — Behavior Assessment
Three tasks, the shortest list in the outline, and 8 scored items — the smallest block on the exam. Read the verbs and you can see the scope of practice being drawn: B.1 says conduct a preference assessment, B.2 and B.3 say participate in. The outline is separating what an RBT runs from what an RBT assists with, and that distinction is the area in one line.
| Task | What the outline asks of you | Terms it names |
|---|---|---|
B.1 | Run a preference assessment in the format the plan calls for, and tell the three formats apart. | multiple stimulus, paired stimulus, free operant |
B.2 | Take part in an assessment of what the client can and cannot yet do. The outline says participate, not conduct. | curriculum-based, developmental, social skills |
B.3 | Take part in the components of a functional assessment that are assigned to you. | descriptive assessment, functional analysis |
19 of 75 scored items · 25%
Area C — Behavior Acquisition
Nineteen scored items over eleven tasks — the largest area in the outline on both counts, and a quarter of everything you can score. Every task here begins with implement except C.9, which asks you to distinguish maintenance from acquisition. This is a list of procedures, and the outline expects you to recognize each one by name.
| Task | What the outline asks of you | Terms it names |
|---|---|---|
C.1 | Deliver reinforcement the way the plan specifies — immediately, contingently, on the stated schedule — and along the dimensions the outline names. | positive and negative reinforcement, schedules of reinforcement, magnitude, intensity, variety |
C.2 | Establish a reinforcer that was not one to begin with, then use it. | conditioned reinforcers |
C.3 | Deliver teaching in discrete trials. | discrete-trial teaching (DTT) |
C.4 | Deliver teaching inside the client's ordinary activity rather than at a table. | incidental teaching, natural environment training (NET) |
C.5 | Teach a multi-step skill as the chain of steps a task analysis broke it into. | forward chaining, backward chaining, total task |
C.6 | Teach the client to respond to one stimulus and not to another. | discrimination training |
C.7 | Use prompts, then remove them on a plan rather than by feel. | stimulus and response prompts, errorless learning, least-to-most, stimulus fading, time delay |
C.8 | Run the procedures that make a learned skill hold up outside the room it was taught in. | generalization across settings, people and stimuli |
C.9 | Tell a maintenance procedure from an acquisition procedure. The one task in area C that asks you to distinguish rather than implement. | maintenance, acquisition |
C.10 | Reinforce closer and closer approximations until the target behavior itself appears. | shaping |
C.11 | Run a system in which what the client earns is exchanged later for something else. | token economies |
The procedures behind these eleven lines, and the discriminations the exam builds its questions out of, are worked through on the behavior acquisition guide.
14 of 75 scored items · 19%
Area D — Behavior Reduction
Seven tasks, 14 scored items, and the list runs in a recognizable order: function first, then antecedent interventions, then differential reinforcement, extinction, punishment, side effects, crisis. Five of the seven say implement. D.1 and D.6 do not, and those two are where the exam asks you to explain rather than carry out.
| Task | What the outline asks of you | Terms it names |
|---|---|---|
D.1 | Name the common functions a behavior can serve. Identify, not implement. | functions of behavior |
D.2 | Change what happens before the behavior, so the behavior is less likely to be worth doing. | NCR, high-probability request sequences, demand fading |
D.3 | Reinforce something other than the target behavior, in the form the plan specifies. | DRO, DRA, DRI, DRL, FCT |
D.4 | Withhold the reinforcement that has been maintaining the behavior. | extinction |
D.5 | Carry out punishment procedures exactly as the plan writes them. | positive punishment, negative punishment, time-out |
D.6 | Describe the secondary effects — of extinction, and of punishment. This is the explain task in area D. | extinction burst, response variation, resurgence, emotional responding, escape and avoidance |
D.7 | Follow the crisis or emergency procedure your client's plan and your setting specify. | crisis and emergency procedures |
The differential-reinforcement family in D.3 is where most of the confusion lives, and it gets a grid of its own on the behavior reduction guide.
10 of 75 scored items · 13%
Area E — Documentation and Reporting
Four tasks, 10 scored items, and not one of them says implement. Area E is about what leaves your hands in writing and what travels up to your supervisor. The phrase in a timely manner appears in three of the four tasks, which tells you what the items are built to test.
| Task | What the outline asks of you | Terms it names |
|---|---|---|
E.1 | Move the intervention team's concerns and suggestions up to your supervisor, in a timely manner. | caregivers, teachers, service providers |
E.2 | Ask for clinical direction, and know which question goes where. | training needs, data irregularities, chain of command |
E.3 | Report the things that could be moving the data and are not the intervention. | illness, medication, schedule changes |
E.4 | Write up what happened in the session objectively, to the requirements that apply to you. | legal, regulatory and workplace requirements |
11 of 75 scored items · 15%
Area F — Ethics
Ten tasks for 11 scored items — more tasks than any area except C, and the tightest tasks-to-items ratio in the outline, so there is very little room for a task to go unexamined. The tasks sit on the RBT Ethics Code (2.0) and its 29 standards, but the outline itself does not quote a single standard.
| Task | What the outline asks of you | Terms it names |
|---|---|---|
F.1 | Apply the core principles underlying the ethics code for RBT certificants. | benefit others; compassion, dignity and respect; integrity |
F.2 | Provide behavior-technician services only after you have demonstrated competence in them. | competence |
F.3 | Work only under ongoing supervision from a supervisor who meets BACB's requirements. | ongoing supervision |
F.4 | Recognize what effective supervision actually consists of. | instructions, modeling, rehearsal, feedback, observation of service delivery |
F.5 | Comply with the requirements for confidential information at every stage it passes through. | collecting, using, storing, protecting, disclosing |
F.6 | Comply with the requirements for what you say publicly about your professional activity. | social media activity, misrepresentation of credentials and outcomes |
F.7 | Identify multiple relationships and their risks, and mitigate the risk when the relationship is unavoidable. | multiple relationships |
F.8 | Follow the code's guidelines on giving and receiving gifts. | gift giving and receiving |
F.9 | Use the interpersonal and professional skills the code names when you represent yourself as an RBT. | accepting feedback, listening actively, seeking input, collaborating |
F.10 | Keep working on cultural humility and responsiveness, your own biases included. | cultural humility, responsiveness, personal biases |
The verbs
How to read a task line
Every task opens with a verb, and the verb is the most useful thing on the line. Count them across the outline and 18 of the 43 tasks say implement — those name a procedure you carry out as the plan writes it. The other 25 ask for something else, and the wording tells you which.
| Leading verb | Tasks | What the wording signals |
|---|---|---|
Implement | 18 | A procedure you carry out as written. Most of areas A, C and D. |
Identify · Describe · Distinguish | 12 | Something you have to recognize or explain rather than perform. |
Conduct · Participate in | 3 | All of area B, and the line between what an RBT runs and what an RBT assists with. |
Communicate · Report · Seek | 4 | All of area E — reporting upward and writing it down. |
Provide · Adhere to · Engage in | 4 | Area F's conduct tasks, where the obligation is ongoing rather than episodic. |
Enter · Calculate | 2 | A.4 and A.6 — the two tasks about handling the numbers after collection. |
Counted from the outline's own wording. Compound openings such as 'identify and comply' are counted on the first verb.
Edition change
What changed from the 2nd-edition Task List
The 2nd-edition RBT Task List carried 37 tasks; the 3rd edition carries 43. Four of the six area names changed, and one of those four changed scope as well as wording — Professional Conduct and Scope of Practice became, simply, Ethics.
| Area | 2nd edition — RBT Task List | 3rd edition — Test Content Outline |
|---|---|---|
A | Measurement | Data Collection and Graphing |
B | Assessment | Behavior Assessment |
C | Skill Acquisition | Behavior Acquisition |
D | Behavior Reduction | Behavior Reduction — unchanged |
E | Documentation and Reporting | Documentation and Reporting — unchanged |
F | Professional Conduct and Scope of Practice | Ethics |
37 tasks became 43. Do not mix the two vocabularies in one sentence — they are different documents.
FAQ
Questions people ask about the task list
Is the RBT Task List the same thing as the RBT Test Content Outline?
In practice, yes. The 2nd-edition document was titled the RBT Task List; the 3rd-edition document that supersedes it is titled the RBT Test Content Outline. The old name is what almost everybody still types, which is why it is the name on this page too.
How many tasks are on the RBT task list?
Forty-three, in six content areas: eight in A, three in B, eleven in C, seven in D, four in E and ten in F. The 2nd edition had 37.
What does a code like C.7 mean?
The letter is the content area and the number is that task's position inside it. Numbering restarts in every area, so a bare task 7
is meaningless without its letter — A.7 is about reading trends in a graph, C.7 is about prompting and fading, F.7 is about multiple relationships.
Does the exam ask a question about every task?
BACB publishes how many scored questions come from each content area, not from each task, so the honest answer is that nobody outside the board can map items to tasks. What is published: 75 scored questions plus 10 unscored pilot questions, and the pilot questions are not identified to you.
Where do I get the official document?
BACB publishes the outline free as a PDF, and it is short enough to read in a sitting. Everything on this page is a plain-English gloss on it, not a substitute for it.
Is the 2nd-edition task list still worth studying from?
Which outline your examination is built from is fixed by when you schedule your appointment, so confirm that on bacb.com rather than in a forum thread. What is safe to say is that the two documents are not interchangeable: 37 tasks against 43 and four renamed areas.
Next step
Find out which of the 43 you can already answer
Ninety questions, sampled to the same area counts this page tabulates, with the reasoning written out on every one.