In considering multiple–baseline designs, an example from an actual study using one of the multiple–baseline forms would help. The value of this example, which involves the behavior–based form, also resides in two of its other characteristics.
As early behaviorological practitioners adapted ABAB/Reversal designs to applied settings, they faced increasingly complex applied situations requiring more sophisticated single–subject experimental designs. For example, sometimes the repetition of Baseline or Intervention phases would stand out as unethical or otherwise not possible.
In 1975 David Anderson and I worked on an applied study at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, which was when and where I began my college teaching career. This study contains some uncommon features worthy of attention, features that one would usually only find spread across several studies.
After considering the ABAB/Reversal type of single–subject designs for basic experimental research in a recent column, this column turns to similar designs for applied research and practice. In applied settings, research considerations differ from laboratory settings, and some compel the adoption of the more complicated “multiple–baseline” single–subject designs that a later column covers.
