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12: Single-Subject Research

  • Page ID
    20206
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    Most of this textbook is about what can be called group research, which typically involves studying a large number of participants and combining their data to draw general conclusions about human behavior. The study by Hall and his colleagues, in contrast, is an example of single-subject research, which typically involves studying a small number of participants and focusing closely on each individual. In this chapter, we consider this alternative approach. We begin with an overview of single-subject research, including some assumptions on which it is based, who conducts it, and why they do. We then look at some basic single-subject research designs and how the data from those designs are analyzed. Finally, we consider some of the strengths and weaknesses of single-subject research as compared with group research and see how these two approaches can complement each other.

    • 12.1: Single-Subject Research
      Researcher Vance Hall and his colleagues were faced with the challenge of increasing the extent to which six disruptive elementary school students stayed focused on their schoolwork. For each of several days, the researchers carefully recorded whether or not each student was doing schoolwork every 10 seconds during a 30-minute period. Once they had established this baseline, they introduced a treatment.
    • 12.2: Overview of Single-Subject Research
      Single-subject research is a type of quantitative research that involves studying in detail the behavior of each of a small number of participants. Note that the term single-subject does not mean that only one participant is studied; it is more typical for there to be somewhere between two and 10 participants. (This is why single-subject research designs are sometimes called small-n designs, where n is the statistical symbol for the sample size.)
    • 12.3: Single-Subject Research Designs
      Before looking at any specific single-subject research designs, it will be helpful to consider some features that are common to most of them.
    • 12.4: The Single-Subject Versus Group “Debate”
      Single-subject research is similar to group research—especially experimental group research—in many ways. They are both quantitative approaches that try to establish causal relationships by manipulating an independent variable, measuring a dependent variable, and controlling extraneous variables. But there are important differences between these approaches too, and these differences sometimes lead to disagreements.
    • 12.5: Single-Subject Research (Summary)
      Key Takeaways and Exercises for the chapter on Single-Subject Research.

    Thunbmail: Results of a Generic Single-Subject Study Illustrating Level, Trend, and Latency. Visual inspection of the data suggests an effective treatment in the top panel but an ineffective treatment in the bottom panel. Image used with permission (CC BY-SA-NC; Anonymous by request).​​​​


    This page titled 12: Single-Subject Research is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Rajiv S. Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Carrie Cuttler, & Dana C. Leighton via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.