Overview of Single-Subject Research Research Methods in Psychology

Table Of Content

• What Makes Psychology a Science?→
• Multiple-Baseline Design Across Settings
• Psychology Research Methods
• An Overview of Single-Subject Experimental Design
• Single-Subject Experimental Design for Evidence-Based Practice
• Single-Subject Experimental Design: An Overview
• General Features of Single-Subject Designs

In addition, care must be taken to ensure equal difficulty of the responses assigned to different conditions. Although most contemporary single-subject research is conducted from the behavioral perspective, it can in principle be used to address questions framed in terms of any theoretical perspective. For example, a studying technique based on cognitive principles of learning and memory could be evaluated by testing it on individual high school students using the single-subject approach. The single-subject approach can also be used by clinicians who take any theoretical perspective—behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic, or humanistic—to study processes of therapeutic change with individual clients and to document their clients’ improvement (Kazdin, 1982)[4]. In this design the baseline phase is followed by separate phases in which different treatments are introduced. The single-subject approach can also be used by clinicians who take any theoretical perspective—behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic, or humanistic—to study processes of therapeutic change with individual clients and to document their clients’ improvement (Kazdin, 1982).

What Makes Psychology a Science?→

Space considerations preclude treating any one aspect of this issue exhaustively (suggestions for further reading are provided). The results of this study (see Figure 7) demonstrated that the student produced a higher number of correct responses and engaged in fewer challenging behaviors when instruction was delivered in Spanish than in English. The superiority of the Spanish instruction was evident in this case because there was no overlap in correct responding or inappropriate behaviors between the English and Spanish conditions. A description of the criteria developed by the panel as well as their application to evidence-based practice in CSD follows.

Multiple-Baseline Design Across Settings

Before continuing, it is important to distinguish single-subject research from two other approaches, both of which involve studying in detail a small number of participants. One is qualitative research, which focuses on understanding people’s subjective experience by collecting relatively unstructured data (e.g., detailed interviews) and analyzing those data using narrative rather than quantitative techniques. Sometimes an individual’s behavior is so severe that the researcher cannot wait to establish a baseline and must begin with an intervention. This is followed by a measurement without the intervention and then a repeat of the intervention. An A-B-A design (also known as a reversal design) involves discontinuing the intervention and returning to a nontreatment condition.

Psychology Research Methods

In an alternating treatments designA single-subject research design in which multiple treatments are alternated rapidly on a regular schedule., two or more treatments are alternated relatively quickly on a regular schedule. For example, positive attention for studying could be used one day and mild punishment for not studying the next, and so on. The alternating treatments design can be a quick and effective way of comparing treatments, but only when the treatments are fast acting. Issues relating to statistical analysis are commonly erroneously conflated with group experimental design per se.

Finally, we demonstrate an AI-generated gene editor, denoted as OpenCRISPR-1, exhibits compatibility with base editing. We release OpenCRISPR-1 publicly to facilitate broad, ethical usage across research and commercial applications. Exact p values are generated, and the tests appear to be straightforward ways to supplement the visual analysis of single-subject data.

Single-Subject Experimental Design for Evidence-Based Practice

Although previous published research (both single-subject and group research) is likely to provide some guidance on how to do this, conducting a study on this student would be more direct and probably more effective. Is a detailed description of an individual, which can include both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Who learned to fear a white rat—along with other furry objects—when the researchers made a loud noise while he was playing with the rat. Case studies can be useful for suggesting new research questions and for illustrating general principles. They can also help researchers understand rare phenomena, such as the effects of damage to a specific part of the human brain. As a general rule, however, case studies cannot substitute for carefully designed group or single-subject research studies.

Clinical Research Education

The potential strength of the internal validity of SSEDs allows researchers, clinicians, and educators to ask questions that might not be feasible or possible to answer with traditional group designs. Because of these strengths, both clinicians and researchers should be familiar with the application, interpretation, and relationship between SSEDs and evidence-based practice. There’s a design — an ABA design — that’s a very strong experimental design where you measure the behavior, you implement treatment, and you then to get experimental control need to see that treatment go back down to baseline, for you to have evidence of experimental control. It’s a hard behavior to implement in our field because we want our behaviors to stay up! In an experimental group versus control group study, the researcher has to find a large number of participants to act as subjects.

In contrast, during the intervention phase, performance is stable, with a range of only 6%. All three of these types of changes may be used as evidence for the effects of an independent variable in an appropriate experimental design. Single-subject research is a type of quantitative research that involves studying in detail the behavior of each of a small number of participants.

In essence, this creates the potential for an order effect (or a carryover effect). Alternatively, Intervention 1 may have measurable but delayed effects on the dependent variable, making it appear that Intervention 2 is effective when the results should be attributed to Intervention 1. Such possibilities should be considered when multi-treatment studies are being planned (see Hains & Baer, 1989, for a comprehensive discussion of multiple-treatment interference). A final, longer phase in which the final “winning” treatment is implemented for an extended time can help alleviate some of the concerns regarding multiple-treatment interference. The data from the final phase of the study depicted in Figure 4 are worth noting because they show the continued performance of the dependent variable in the absence of the treatment.

Challenges of implementing computer-aided diagnostic models for neuroimages in a clinical setting npj Digital Medicine - Nature.com

Challenges of implementing computer-aided diagnostic models for neuroimages in a clinical setting npj Digital Medicine.

Posted: Thu, 13 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Herman Ebbinghaus’s research on memory and Ivan Pavlov’s research on classical conditioning are other early examples, both of which are still described in almost every introductory psychology textbook. Differentiated writing interventions for high-achieving urban African American elementary students. For example, single-subject design can be implemented prior to implementing a randomized controlled trial to get a better handle on the magnitude of the effects, the workings of the active ingredients, and all of that. 2If the biological process under investigation actually occurs at the population level (e.g. natural selection), the population parameter precisely applies to the question at hand. However, group comparisons are more often used to study processes that function on the individual level.

The results of single-subject research can also be analyzed using statistical procedures—and this is becoming more common. There are many different approaches, and single-subject researchers continue to debate which are the most useful. The mean and standard deviation of each participant’s responses under each condition are computed and compared, and inferential statistical tests such as the t test or analysis of variance are applied (Fisch, 2001). (Note that averaging across participants is less common.) Another approach is to compute the percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) for each participant (Scruggs & Mastropieri, 2001). This is the percentage of responses in the treatment condition that are more extreme than the most extreme response in a relevant control condition. In the study of Hall and his colleagues, for example, all measures of Robbie’s study time in the first treatment condition were greater than the highest measure in the first baseline, for a PND of 100%.