Quiz 4 Questions

Question 1

What is an odds ratio?

Answer 1

An odds ratio refers to examining a correlation between two variables by comparing how often the behavior of interest occurs in the presence and absence of a particular variable.

Question 2

What does an odds ratio between smoking and lung cancer of 25 mean?

Answer 2

It means people who smoke are 25 more likely to get lung cancer.

Question 3

What does an odds ratio between texting on a cell phone and crashing of 6 mean?

Answer 3

It means that a person is 6 times as likely to have a crash while texting than when they are not texting.

Question 4

What is selection bias?

Answer 4

bias introduced by the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population. Correlations between a variable you are studying and a more powerful variable can lead to selection bias

Question 5

List five advantages of replication based designs.

Answer 5

1. It is not necessary to randomly assign participants to a treatment and a control group
2. You do not require a large number of participants.
3. You do not need an untreated control group
4. They allow the person conducting the study to determine whether the treatment worked for each individual.
5. They allow the researcher to control sources of variability and make changes to the treatment if it does not work as expected.

Question 6

List three advantages of an AB design.

Answer 6

1. Timeline during baseline can document that the behavior is remaining stable and is not improving.
2. The treatment can be shown be associated with a level change, and transition phase or both.
3. The effect of the treatment is monitored over time on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.

Question 7

List two reasons why is the AB design particularly important.

Answer 7

First, this design is a component of all behavior analysis research designs and each of these designs require making a discrimination about the differences between baseline and treatment conditions;

Second, because this design is used by behavioral analytic practitioners to guide their work on a day -to-day basis.

Question 8

List three weaknesses of an AB design.

Answer 8

1. It is possible that the change, if gradual may have occurred as a result of other variables that were there all along.
2. It is possible that some confounded variable that was correlated with the introduction of the treatment was responsible for the changes.
3. Regression toward the mean could be a factor.

Question 9

What are five other factors to consider when evaluating an AB design?

Answer 9

1. How likely is it that the behavior would have change that much on its own? Was it a large change, or an improbable change based on experience?
2. Can any other variables be identified that could have been responsible for the change.
3. The longer the baseline the greater the confidence. Longer baseline address regression toward the mean.
4. If data are collected on a large group of individuals over a large geographic area and remains stable until the treatment is introduced it add support to the results.
5. A large number of independent AB designs provide overwhelming evidence that a confounding variable correlated with the introduction of the treatment did not produce the effect.

Question 10

What is the baseline stability effect size rule?

Answer 10

The greater the stability of data the smaller the effect size you can detect.

Question 11

What are two disadvantages of the ABA design?

Answer 11

1. The treatment effects may persist even if they produced the change.
2. You leave the person in the baseline rather than treatment condition.

Question 12

What is the main advantage of a BAB design over an ABA design?

Answer 12

The person ends the study in the treatment condition.

Question 13

Define an ABAB or reversal design? Do you always need to start with a baseline?

Answer 13

In this design you alternate between two conditions, typically a baseline and a treatment condition. Typically, behavior is permitted to stabilize before each condition change. You don’t have to start with a so-called baseline. You could start with the treatment, or maybe both are possibly treatments. One important thing to remember is that you are looking at two or possibly more conditions.

Question 14

What would you recommend to someone who thinks the treatment will lead to irreversibility who is choosing a reversal design? In other words how can they increase the chance of the design working?

Answer 14

Introduce the treatment for a brief period and then return to baseline. The procedure minimizes the chance that new contingencies develop that can trap or maintain the behavior.

Question 15

What are three options if you have conducted ABAB phases and there appears to be an effect but there is a lot of overlap between the data?

Answer 15

1. Track down and control the sources of variability.
2. Introduce additional replications
3. Intensify the treatment. Options 1 and 3 typically work best

Question 16

What does the C stand for in an ABCB design? Give an example?

Answer 16

Control condition. Could be non-contingent reinforcement or a reversal of the reinforcement contingency.

Question 17

17. What is the most likely cause of partial reversibility?

Answer 17

A new reinforcer has taken effect, or you may not be able to easily remove all aspects of the treatment because some elements may be under the clients control.