Single-Case Evaluation Designs for Practitioners

Abstract

This article examines single-case designs that omit baseline phases, contain shorter reversal phases, administer treatment across fewer baselines, or have other features that make them easier for practitioners to use in evaluating their own interventions. Particular attention is given to the Repeated Pretest-Posttest and the Periodic Treatments Designs, the Nonconcurrent Multiple-Baseline Design, the short reversal design, the short multiple-baseline design, and the short alternating treatments design. Also discussed and illustrated is how these streamlined designs can raise practitioners' sensitivity to intervention outcomes, assist practitioners in providing evidence-based services while adjusting for client diversity, and advance practitioners' knowledge.

Improving Student Confidence in Using Group Work Standards

“…The MBD is a controlled single-case design that evaluates an intervention by successively applying it across two or more independent baselines or clinical measures. If improvements occur when, and only when, the intervention is applied to those baselines or measures, we can infer that the intervention caused those improvements (Wong, 2010, 2014).…”

Mixed‐Design Training Outcomes for Fellows Serving At‐Risk Youth Within Integrated Care Settings

“…The effectiveness of the SAFE-C program to address counselor self-efficacy, professional development, and interprofessional socialization and valuing was evaluated by using visual data analysis (Morgan & Morgan, 2009), performing nonparametric pre-post group comparative analyses because of limitations in the number of baseline data points, and calculating effect sizes for each individual participant (within-subject changes). According to Wong (2010), data in the treatment phase should demonstrate immediate changes in level, trend, or a combination beyond baseline. For both groups, it is noted that professional identity orientation, or attitudes and beliefs related to the wellness model, was high and did not significantly fluctuate throughout the time of this study.…”

“…In this study, we used a limited, A-B-A withdrawal, short multiple-baseline, single-case research design in combination with a quasi-experimental pre-post comparative design to evaluate the efficacy of the new training program. The combined method was selected because of the strength of this design in highlighting case differences, practicality of application for intervention studies, and dimensionality of results (Lenz, 2015;Wong, 2010). Because of the practicalities of data collection, two baseline measures, two intervention measures, and one posttest measure were completed for single-case analysis; thus, the results are to be considered in a limited, exploratory way.…”

Teaching Research and Practice Evaluation Skills to Graduate Social Work Students

“…It should be mentioned here that a deliberate effort was made to choose an average and not a superior or outstanding class for examination. Final grades and the number of projects employing innovative research designs (e.g., Wong, 2010) are a couple of indicators of class performance, and this class did not earn an especially large number of ''As'' or employ numerous sophisticated evaluation designs as compared to other classes of this type (the project incorporating an A-B-BC-BD-BC-BD-BC design being the one exception).…”