Defining and assessing immediacy in single-case experimental designs

Abstract

Immediacy is one of six data aspects (alongside level, trend, variability, overlap, and consistency) that has to be taken into account when visually analyzing single-case data. Given that it is one of the aspects that has received considerably less attention than other data aspects, the current text offers a broad review of the proposed conceptual definitions of immediacy (i.e., what it refers to) and also of the suggested operational definitions (i.e., how exactly is it assessed and/or quantified). Provided that a variety of conceptual and operational definitions is identified, we propose following a multiverse-randomization approach for assessing immediate effects in single-case experimental designs. The multiverse element refers to checking the congruency of the results for the different possible operational definitions. The randomization element refers to the possibility to conduct multiple randomization tests to assess the immediate effects.