Remote teaching of publication‐quality, single‐case graphs in Microsoft Excel

Abstract

Microsoft Excel is ubiquitous, cost-effective, and can be used to create publication-quality single-case design graphs. We systematically replicated the GraphPad Prism video tutorial by Mitteer et al. (2018) to teach 24 master's students to create multiple-baseline graphs using Excel 2016. Students' mean accuracy on the multiple-baseline graph was 25% in pretraining, 86% with the video tutorial, and 96% with the review checklist. Next, students used the same video tutorial to create multielement and reversal graphs. Students' mean accuracy on the multielement graph was 93% with video tutorial and 94% with review checklist, and accuracy on the reversal graph was 82% with video tutorial and 94% with review checklist. Students reported moderate to high satisfaction with both training components. The results support scientist-practitioners using the video tutorial and review checklists to create three common

Tutorial: Artificial neural networks to analyze single-case experimental designs.

“…First, this procedure involves organizing the data in a spreadsheet (e.g., Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers). We recommend the spreadsheet format because spreadsheets are a common tool used by researchers to graph single-case data (Dixon et al, 2009; Lehardy et al, 2021). The spreadsheet should contain two columns with no header (see “application.xlsx” for an example).…”

A concise review of recent advancements in the graphical training of behavior analysts

“…The other six publications evaluated the effects of training procedures experimentally. Most of these studies included (a) assessments of maintenance ranging from 1 week to 1 month, (b) stimulus generalization by evaluating performance with untargeted graphs, including different graph types (e.g., Lehardy et al, 2021), and (c) social validity of the procedures as rated by the participants. However, only three studies provided the training materials for others to use (Lehardy et al, 2021;Mitteer et al, 2018Mitteer et al, , 2020 and did so outside the confines of the articles (e.g., available on YouTube).…”

A proposal for the assessment of replication of effects in single‐case experimental designs

“…The researcher makes choices by clicking or by writing a few numbers but nothing else is required. The software is an application built via Shiny, as for other data analytical approaches (e.g., Declercq et al, 2020; Kranak et al, 2021), which makes training of users to construct the graphs for themselves following multiple steps unnecessary (e.g., Dixon et al, 2009; Lehardy et al, 2021; Mitteer et al, 2018).…”