Measurement of Change & Single Case Design Flashcards
What are the 3 functions of baseline data on the target behavior of a client?
- Descriptive information on the target behavior (frequency, intensity, etc.)
- Gives you a standard to which you can evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention
- Serves as a predictive function; estimate the client’s behavior in the future when no intervention is applied
Why do you need a stable baseline in collecting data on the target behavior of the client?
You need to have a stable baseline to accurately evaluate a treatment, otherwise this gets biased.
What three concepts are used in demonstrating the effect of an intervention?
- Prediction
- Verification
- Replication
What is an AB design and which concepts can be demonstrated?
Baseline and intervention phase, only prediction is possible. Most used design in clinical practice.
What is an ABAB design and which concepts can be demonstrated?
Baseline (A), Intervention (B), withdrawal of intervention (A), reimplementation of intervention (B). Prediction, verification ánd replication possible; causality can be demonstrated.
Why are reversal/ABAB designs not often used in clinical practice?
- It is not always ethical to withdraw an intervention
- When the intervention is withdrawed, there is a high chance that behaviors will not worsen, thereby hindering the possibility on demonstrating causality.
- When skills are being teached in an intervention, this is difficult to “unlearn” in the withdrawal phase, so difficult in demonstrating efficacy.
What are alternating treatment designs and which concepts can be tested?
When you want to compare 2/3 treatment options, you can use this design. You then rapidly alternate between the different conditions and compare the observed behavior changes per condition. This saves a lot of time and prevents order effects (because there is no set sequence of conditions). Prediction, verification and replication can be demonstrated.
What are the 4 advantages of alternating treatment designs?
- There is no need to withdrawal of treatments, making it more ethical
- This design can be used when there is no time to collect enough data for a stable baseline
- Carry-over effects are unlikely to occur bc randomly alternating conditions in a short amount of time
- The effects of treatments are quickly demonstrated in these designs.
What are the 3 disadvantages of alternating treatment designs?
- Only a limited amount of treatments can be tested (2 or 3), because of the fact that pp must be able to discriminate between them + each condition must be counterbalanced (time consuming)
- Rapid alternation between treatment and no treatment difficult in practice
- Multiple treatment interference; effects of an intervention are not solely due to the intervention, but to a factor of an intervention condition being alternated with another condition.
What are multiple baseline designs and which concepts can be demonstrated?
Across behaviors: sequentially administering the intervention to two or more behaviors exhibited by the same client while holding other factors constant (setting f.e.).
Across participants: targeting the same behaviors emitted by two or more clients and administering the same intervention to each client sequentially.
Prediction, verification and replication possible.
What are the two advantages of multiple baseline designs?
- Withdrawal of intervention is not necessary
2. the design allows you to target several behaviors/settings for intervention
What are the main disadvantages of multiple baseline designs?
- To demonstrate efficacy, the treatment needs to be implemented in at least three settings/behaviors/clients so this costs time.
- Across behaviors: the design can only be applied if the targeted behaviors do not occur together. If this would not be the case, when one behavior improves, other will too; not very useful to use this design then.
- Across settings: only useful when targeting 1 behavior in the intervention; when the intervention is implemented in 1 setting, this may automatically improve behaviors in other settings, hindering generalization.
- Across participants: not often the case that participants with the same problems present at the same time > nonconcurrent multiple baseline design (but also drawbacks).
When is it clinically useful to use a BAB-design?
When the patients’ behavior is too severe to wait for treatment. In a BAB design you skip the stable baseline phase and directly start with intervention, then withdraw the intervention and reimplement it.
Why is it not necessary to withdraw an intervention in a multiple baseline design?
First you start with the baseline in behavior/setting/participant 1; when this is stable, you apply the intervention. When effects are starting to show, you can start with the intervention in behavior/setting/participant 2; instead of withdrawing the intervention in 1, you can demonstrate if the effect is due to the intervention by showing that the effect is also present in setting/behavior/participant 2 (and so on).
Why is it not necessary to withdraw an intervention in the changing criterion design?
You gradually change the criterion in accordance with improvements in behavior; each time you increase the criterion, the previous criterion acts like the baseline/verification standard. The replication standard is shown when, as previously shown, the intervention still improves the behavior when the criterion is increased.
