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Teaching about small N designs is a common element of the modern research methods course. Further, these designs are the central feature of courses in applied behavior analysis and an important part of any course in counseling or clinical psychology. The history of these small N designs typically is traced no further than the work of B. F. Skinner, who argued strongly for a philosophy of science grounded in the in-depth study of individuals behaving in their environments. Yet, the logic of the small N design has a more complex history, and it was common during experimental psychology's earliest days. From the beginning of the "new laboratory psychology" of the late 19th century, studies often featured the detailed study of single individuals, with additional subjects used for the purpose of replication.

E. B. Titchener's Society of Experimentalists was founded in 1904, partly as a result of Titchener's personal conflicts with certain members of the American Psychological Association and partly out of his frustration over the structure and content of the Association's annual meeting. However, though Titchener was clearly the prime mover in organizing the experimentalists, the Society's formation reflected the more widespread dissatisfaction of a number of experimentalists over the direction being taken by the Association. Lightner Witmer, for example, attempted but failed to form a separate association for experimentalists six years prior to Titchener's successful effort.

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