The BCaBA task list is now the Test Content Outline: a study guide to all nine sections

If you searched for the task list, you are looking for the right document under its old name. Before 2025 the exam was written to the 5th-edition task list; the 6th edition, the one in force now, is called the Test Content Outline and took effect on 1 January 2025.

1. Before 2025

   Task list (5th ed.)

   The name most older study material still uses, and the edition it was written to.

2. From 1 Jan 2025

   Test Content Outline (6th ed.)

   90 tasks in nine lettered sections; the exam is built from these, with a fixed count of scored items per section.

3. From 1 Jan 2027

   New eligibility rules

   Coursework and fieldwork requirements change. The exam stays on the 6th-edition outline.

The outline itself is a short, free PDF. Each section has a letter and a name, each task inside it a code, so G.9 is the chaining task in Section G, Behavior-Change Procedures. Next to each section the outline prints its number of scored questions. Those counts are the most useful numbers on this page: under the 6th-edition outline, per the current BCaBA Handbook (updated June 2026), the exam is 175 questions, 150 scored and 25 unscored, and the 150 scored items are split by section the same way on every form. The full format, from booking to result, is on the exam page.

Read the plot from the top. Section G, Behavior-Change Procedures, carries 22 items. Section C, Measurement, Data Display, and Interpretation, and Section H, Intervention Development and Monitoring, carry 20 each. Those three alone are 62 of the 150 scored items, about 41% of the exam. At the other end, Section A, Behaviorism and Philosophical Foundations, and Section D, Experimental Design, carry 10 each: 20 items between them, about 13%.

The other three, A, D and I, sit below it. That is the first rule of the route: a study plan that gives every section the same week over-serves A, D and I and under-serves G, C and H.

The last column tells you how to study a section as well as how long. Section G is wide: 20 tasks for 22 items, so close to one question per procedure, and breadth beats depth. Section F is the opposite: six tasks carry 17 items, nearly three each, so functional assessment and preference assessment get tested from several angles. Section H works the same way, with eight tasks behind 20 items.

The nine cards below follow the outline's order, each with its scored items, its share of the 150 and its task count, plus one or two lines on what the section asks of you, with task codes to look up in the PDF. Section C and Section G have full guides now, each with 12 practice questions; the other seven are already in the practice exam and get their own guides later.

• A10 items · 7% · 5 tasks

  Behaviorism and Philosophical Foundations

  Where the science comes from: its goals, its working assumptions such as determinism and selectionism, radical behaviorism, and the seven dimensions of applied work (A.2, A.5).

  4 questions in the practice exam · guide coming soon

• B18 items · 12% · 15 tasks

  Concepts and Principles

  The working vocabulary: reinforcement and punishment, simple schedules only, unconditioned motivating operations, stimulus control and the elementary verbal operants (B.8, B.12, B.14).

  7 questions in the practice exam · guide coming soon

• C20 items · 13% · 10 tasks

  Measurement, Data Display, and Interpretation

  Picking the dimension and the recording method, continuous or discontinuous, then graphing, reading the graph and setting mastery criteria (C.5, C.8, C.10).

  Section guide with 12 practice questions

• D10 items · 7% · 6 tasks

  Experimental Design

  Independent and dependent variables, internal and external validity, and telling reversal, multiple-baseline, multielement and changing-criterion designs apart (D.2, D.5).

  4 questions in the practice exam · guide coming soon

• E18 items · 12% · 11 tasks

  Ethical and Professional Issues

  The Ethics Code from the assistant's seat: your competence and when to bring in your supervisor, confidentiality, multiple relationships, cultural humility (E.3, E.7, E.9).

  7 questions in the practice exam · guide coming soon

• F17 items · 11% · 6 tasks

  Behavior Assessment

  Opening a case: reviewing records, prioritizing goals with the client, skill and preference assessments, and indirect, descriptive and experimental functional assessment (F.5, F.6).

  7 questions in the practice exam · guide coming soon

• G22 items · 15% · 20 tasks

  Behavior-Change Procedures

  The procedures you run day to day: prompts and fading, shaping, chaining, differential reinforcement, punishment, generalization and maintenance (G.5, G.9, G.18).

  Section guide with 12 practice questions

• H20 items · 13% · 8 tasks

  Intervention Development and Monitoring

  Turning assessment into a plan and keeping it honest: measurable goals, replacement behaviors, procedural integrity, and data-based decisions to keep or change course (H.4, H.6, H.7).

  8 questions in the practice exam · guide coming soon

• I15 items · 10% · 9 tasks

  Supervisory Relationships

  Supervision in both directions: building the relationship, clear expectations, behavioral skills training and performance diagnostics for the staff you train (I.4, I.6, I.8).

  6 questions in the practice exam · guide coming soon

Two cards hint at what makes this outline the assistant's outline. Section E includes knowing when to seek your supervisor's guidance (E.3) and what to do when you move to a different supervisor (E.6), because a BCaBA always practices under a BCBA. Section I covers the other direction, the people a BCaBA trains and supervises. Neither makes sense if you study them as abstract ethics; read them as the job.

For a section without a guide yet, the route is the same: open the PDF, read its task lines, then run that section's questions in the free practice exam, where chips filter the 60 trials by section from A to I.

For study purposes, one change matters more than any detail: material written to the 5th-edition task list was written for a different exam. A lot of it still circulates as paid guides and free PDFs, and it looks close enough to pass. Under the handbook, you sit the edition in force when you schedule, and as of 14 October 2026 that is the 6th edition, with no newer one announced.

You do not need the old task list to study for the new exam. You need to recognize old material when it lands in front of you. Four checks catch most of it:

• It calls the document the Test Content Outline (6th ed.) and shows nine lettered sections, A to I, with the current names.
• It describes the exam as 175 questions, 150 scored plus 25 unscored, in 4 hours. Any other count or time means it was not written for the current exam.
• Its ethics content follows the Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts, effective 1 January 2022, not the code it replaced.
• It covers 6th-edition tasks such as mastery criteria (C.10), behavioral persistence (G.12), cultural humility (E.9) and equity in supervision (I.3).

One more tell: a source that gives you a score to aim for in each section is describing something the exam does not report. The result is pass/fail, with a breakdown by content area only for a candidate who does not pass.

Give each section study time in proportion to its scored items, start with the largest, and keep ethics running alongside instead of saving it for the end. The simplest way to make that concrete is to plan 60 study sessions and share them out by item count.

1. 1

   Week 0: take a baseline

   Run the 60 practice trials once, untimed, before you study anything. The record at the end shows correct answers per section; write them down, because that is the line you are trying to move.

2. 2

   Weeks 1–3: G, C and H

   The three largest sections, 62 items. Keep Section B open beside Section G, since every procedure in G is built from a principle in B. Start with the Section G guide and the Section C guide.

3. 3

   Weeks 4–6: B, F and E

   53 items. Section E has also been running since week 1 as one short daily block of ethics scenarios; here it gets full sessions of its own.

4. 4

   Weeks 7–8: I, A and D

   35 items. Section I is the supervision you will give; A and D reward clean definitions and telling designs apart.

5. 5

   Weeks 9–10: mixed and timed

   Switch to the paced run of the practice exam: 60 trials in 82 minutes, the pace the handbook's 4 hours for 175 questions works out to. Review every miss the same day, then rerun the weakest section.

6. 6

   Final week

   Light review only. Reread the handbook's test-day rules: arriving more than 30 minutes late means being turned away and losing the appointment fee.

Ten weeks is a shape, not a rule. If you have six, keep the order and shrink each block. If your baseline shows one section far below the rest, move it forward regardless of its size: a section you keep missing costs more than a larger one you already handle.

Start with what the BACB publishes for free, then judge everything else against the outline. The free set is short: the Test Content Outline (6th ed.), the Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts, and the BCaBA Handbook, which prints three sample items to show the question format. The BACB states that it cannot endorse study materials and keeps its exam items confidential, so no study guide, ours included, contains questions from the exam.

For anything else, a guide, a course, a question bank, four questions sort it quickly:

• Is it written to the BCaBA outline, 6th edition, section by section, A to I?
• Does every practice question explain why the key is right and why each other option is wrong?
• Can you filter practice by section, so your baseline tells you what to open next?
• Is it about the BCaBA, or a BCBA product with a BCaBA label added?

A BCBA source is not useless, since the science is shared, but it is mis-sized: pages on tasks you will not see, too little on the assistant's tasks in E and I.

Both, in that order, and for different jobs. Flashcards build recall of terms; four-option questions build the decision the exam actually asks for, which is picking the right concept, procedure or next step when every option sounds plausible.

A workable split: flashcards for the first two weeks of each section block, ten minutes a day, then mostly questions. For Sections C, G and H, whose tasks are about running procedures and reading data (C.9, G.5, H.7), move to questions sooner.

• Practice examFree BCaBA practice exam: 60 explained questions across all nine sections
• Section GSection G for the BCaBA: behavior-change procedures, the outline's heaviest section
• Section CSection C for the BCaBA: measuring behavior, graphing it, and reading the graph
• The examThe BCaBA exam, from booking to result: format, pass/fail scoring, pass rate and retakes
• HomeBCaBA certification: what a Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst does, and the route to it

1. 01What is the BCaBA task list?

   It is the old name for the document that lists what the exam covers. Since 1 January 2025 it has been the BCaBA Test Content Outline (6th ed.): 90 tasks in nine sections, A to I, with the number of scored items each section carries.

2. 02Is the BCaBA exam on the 5th or 6th edition?

   The 6th. The Test Content Outline (6th ed.) took effect on 1 January 2025, and per the handbook you test on the edition in force when you schedule. Material written to the 5th-edition task list describes a different exam.

3. 03How should I study for the BCaBA exam?

   Take a baseline run of practice questions first, then study in proportion to the item counts: G, C and H (62 of 150 scored items), then B, F and E, then I, A and D, with ethics as a short daily block throughout. Finish with timed, mixed sets. The study order above maps it week by week.

4. 04What is the hardest section of the BCaBA exam?

   The BACB does not publish difficulty by section, and the result is based on overall performance, with no pass mark per section. The largest is Section G, Behavior-Change Procedures, at 22 items. The hardest one for you is the one your baseline shows lowest; a failing score report also shows performance by content area.

5. 05Is the BCaBA test content outline different from the BCBA one?

   Yes. The section letters match, but the BCaBA outline has its own 90 tasks and its own item counts, and Sections H and I carry different names. It stops at simple schedules and unconditioned motivating operations, and adds assistant tasks such as when to seek your supervisor's guidance (E.3). See BCaBA vs BCBA.

6. 06Are flashcards enough for the BCaBA exam?

   Rarely. They build recall of terms, which helps most in Sections A, B and D, but the exam asks you to choose one key among four options, and close options punish a definition you only half know. Use cards early in each section, then switch to explained practice questions.

7. 07Where can I get the BCaBA Test Content Outline PDF?

   Free from the BACB: the outline PDF lists every section and task. Read it next to the BCaBA Handbook, which covers the exam format and rules.

8. 08Are the practice questions on this site taken from the BCaBA exam?

   No. Each trial here was written for this site, task by task, from the 6th-edition outline, and every option carries a note; none is an exam item. The BACB keeps its exam items confidential and does not endorse any study material.