Assignment 2: Course Project Component— Multiple Baseline Design, Variation 2

Variation of the Multiple Baseline Design

for the Single-Subject Study

Janice Calice

Walden University

January 12, 2020

Variation of the Multiple Baseline Design for the Single-Subject Study

Single-subject research refers to the research design whereby the subject acts as their own control instead of implementing a different individual or group of persons. The research design is mainly used in fields such as academics, psychology, and even when studying human mannerisms amongst other fields. For the design to be successful, it is important to meet several requirements. First, the research design ought to involve a continuous assessment whereby the phenomena under study are studied repeatedly to ensure accurate results. The other requirement is the involvement of a baseline assessment. This implies that before any intervention in the study model is done, the researcher needs to evaluate the changes in the dependent variable. The other requirement is the variability in data. At this point, the researcher needs to introduce an explanatory variable, commonly known as the treatment into the model. They will then study the steady changes in the model that may be attributed to the treatment. The design follows a particular procedure characterized by three major steps.

The initial step in the single-subject design is the baseline. At this stage, the investigator obtains information regarding the dependent variable without involving treatment. The next phase is the intervention. Here, the researcher introduces an explanatory variable and then observes the changes in the dependent variable. The third step is the reversal stage. It involves the removal of the explanatory variable from the model and then studying the behavioral changes in the dependent variable (Gierut et al., 2015).

Whenever implementing the multiple baseline designs, there may be potential issues in the reversal stage that would lead to variation. They involve the removal of the explanatory variable from the research model. If a treatment works well as far as changing the behavior of the study parameter is concerned, then removing such a treatment variable would be unethical. This may be applied to vital study phenomena. For instance, the study may aim at the usage of a wheelchair by a disabled person to increase their easiness of mobility and self-reliance. Withdrawing the wheelchair from the disabled person just to prove that it is vital in his or her mobility abilities would cause many problems to the individual and therefore would be unethical to withdraw the wheelchair from them. The multiple-baseline design may also be impacted in a scenario whereby the dependent variable does not return to the baseline stage upon removing the explanatory variable. For example, let us assume that the research aimed at establishing the cause-and-effect relationship between positive attention and the willingness of a student to study. Upon giving positive attention to the student, they may increase their rate of studying. However, they could continue increasing their study rate even when the positive attention is withdrawn. This implies that positive attention might not be the reason that the student increased their study rate. There would be a possibility that at the same time, when the student had the attention, something else happened that increased their study rate as well (Gast et al., 2018).

The problems that arise may be solved by introducing one treatment variable at a time to the subject. At times, it would also be important to include other individuals in the single-subject study in such a manner that the treatment is used in different participants and their mannerisms would be observed. The idea is that using the treatment on a single subject, is that there is a positive response that could be perceived as a coincidence. However, using the explanatory variable on different participants and studying any changes that may arise is unlikely to cause a coincidence. This would be the initial variation in the multiple-baseline design for the single-subject research (Au et al., 2017).

References

Au, T. M., Sauer-Zavala, S., King, M. W., Petrocchi, N., Barlow, D. H., & Litz, B. T. (2017). Compassion-based therapy for trauma-related shame and posttraumatic stress: Initial evaluation using a multiple baseline design. Behavior Therapy, 48(2), 207-221.

Gast, D. L., Lloyd, B. P., & Ledford, J. R. (2018). Multiple baseline and multiple probe designs. In Single Case Research Methodology, pp. 239-281. Routledge.

Gierut, J. A., Morrisette, M. L., & Dickinson, S. L. (2015). Effect size for single-subject design in phonological treatment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58(5), 1464-1481.