socw 6311 week3

 

Social workers serve clients in highly complex real-world environments. Clients often implement recommended interventions outside of social workers’ direct observation. Yet, evidence-based research calls for establishing cause-and-effect between selected interventions and client outcomes as much possible. So, how do social workers truly know the intervention itself—and not some external factor—is causing the change in a given client? To meet this challenge, social workers must understand the study designs available to them and all the variations of that design that can increase the rigor of the experiment and improve the likelihood of verifying a cause-and-effect relationship. 

In this Discussion, you analyze the strengths and limitations of single-subject design and explore the many variations of the design that use baseline and treatment phases.

 

• Dudley, J. R. (2020). Social work evaluation: Enhancing what we do  (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
  
  • Chapter 4, “Common Types of Evaluations”
    
    • Read “Common Practice Evaluations” (pp. 89–92).
  • Chapter 9, “Is the Intervention Effective?”
    
    • Read “Outcome Evaluations for Practice” (pp. 236–246).

Single-Subject Design Studies

• Gee, B. M., Lloyd, K., Sutton, J., & McOmber, T. (2021). Weighted blankets and sleep quality in children with autism spectrum disorders: A single-subject designLinks to an external site.. Children , 8 (1), 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/children8010010
• McMahon, A. K., Cox, A. E., & Miller, D. E. (2021). Supporting mindfulness with technology in students with intellectual and developmental disabilitiesLinks to an external site.. Journal of Special Education Technology , 36 (4), 284–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162643420924191

 

• Define single-subject design and identify two strengths and two limitations.
• Describe and assess the study design in the provided research article. 
• Suppose you would like to evaluate the outcomes of your chosen EBP intervention on your client from Week 1 (Tiffani, Jake, or Paula). How would you do so? Which single-subject design (e.g., AB, ABC, ABAB, BAB) would you choose and why?

 

• Review the Learning Resources on using a single-subject design to evaluate practice. Determine the strengths and limitations of this design.
• Select one single-subject design research article provided in the Learning Resources. While reading it, make note of how the study was conducted (the methodology).
• Consider the different ways to plan a single-subject design evaluation, including AB, ABC, ABAB, and BAB. Determine which one you would use with your client from Week 1 (e.g., Tiffani, Jake, or Paula).