Exam 13: Experimental Research: Quasi and Single-Case Designs

A key characteristic that differentiates quasi-experiments from strong experiments is:

The "B" in the A-B-A design represents the ________ condition:

Dr. English wants to test an incentive program to increase attendance in her classes. For the first eight weeks of the semester, she does not use the program and records attendance rates each week. Then she initiates the incentive program for the last eight weeks and continues to record attendance rate each week. She detects an increase in attendance over the last eight weeks. What design did Dr. English use?

Major considerations for the changing-criterion design include all the following EXCEPT:

A researcher is interested in the effect of a late afternoon snack on attention to school work. She designs a single-case design to test the hypothesis that the snack will increase the number of minutes of attention. She uses one child and starts out by measuring his attention to school work during 10 baseline sessions. She then introduces the snack for 10 sessions. After those 10 sessions, she withdraws the snack and examines 10 sessions of baseline again. Finally, she then reintroduces the snack for 10 more sessions. What kind of design is this?

Although there is a likelihood of selection bias in the nonequivalent comparison-group design, the use of a pretest can help identify and alleviate some of the danger of this bias.

David is conducting a single-case study with one of his students. He has noticed that there is a great deal of variability in the data. To be prudent, he should

Strong experimental designs and quasi-experimental designs differ in that quasi-experimental designs do not include control groups.

Strong experimental research designs differ from quasi-experimental research designs in that in quasi-experimental research designs:

In an A-B-A single-case design, participants get which of the following sequences of treatment and baseline:

Control techniques such as matching and statistical control can be used with the nonequivalent comparison-group design to help reduce the problem of differential selection.

The baseline in a single-case study:

Which series seems indicative of no effect?

In single-case studies, visual inspection of data leads to the identification of treatment effects unless the baseline and treatment data overlap or there is a great deal of variability in the data.

A researcher compares the regression lines of an experimental and control group. This is an example of which type of nonexperimental design?

If a researcher must conduct a research study using intact classrooms rather than randomly assigning participants to the classrooms, a quasi-experimental design will appropriate.

In quasi-experimental designs there are different criteria for inferring causality than in strong research designs.

A limitation of the A-B-A and A-B-A-B single-case designs is that:

A hypothesis that does not receive support in one single-case study:

In single-subject research designs, the baseline phase is a benchmark against which the treatment condition's results are compared.