Presented by
David Trembath, PhD
Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University
Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre, La Trobe University
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- Decisions about whether to continue, alter, or discontinue the intervention rely on clinical judgement taking into account all relevant factors
- To make an informed decision based on data, you will need at a minimum of 3 points in the intervention phase
- This will allow you to examine for any changes in the behaviour with regard to level, variability, or trend, just as you did in the baseline phase
In the case of Jonathan, simply looking at the data (visual analysis) suggests to us that he has responded quickly to intervention.
However, often we want to also consider more objective, statistical measures of changes in behaviour.
Activity
Examine your own data or the data provided for Jonathan, and consider the following scenarios:
- What would you do if no behaviour change had occurred in the first three intervention sessions?
- What would you do if the behaviour was highly variable?
- What would you do if you were working with a client whose performance decreased following the start of intervention?
Note that each of these scenarios requires you to consider many factors beyond the data, in order to make sound clinical decisions.
Our aim, in using N1 designs, is not to ignore these other factors, but simply to ensure that the data we use to inform our clinical decisions provides an accurate, reliable, and valid measure of the client’s response to the intervention.