Social validation: the evolution of standards of competency for target behaviors.

The use of social validation procedures has become widespread in recent years. Although most researchers have used social validation procedures to select target behaviors and to evaluate whether the changes produced by a treatment program should be considered socially useful, little attention has been focused upon using the social validation process to determine the optimal levels for target behaviors. This paper suggests several ways in which social validation procedures can be employed in order to select when and how much to change target behaviors.