Recent innovations in small-N designs for research and practice in professional school counseling

This article illustrates an innovative small-N research design that researchers and practitioners can use to investigate questions of interest in professional seminary counseling. The distributed criterion (DC) design integrates uncompounded bodys of three classic small-N research designs--the changing criterion, reversal, and multiple baseline. The DC design is well suited to situations in which pupils or school counselors must allocate, prioritize, and adjust time or effort to without fault [i]or[/i] blemish [i]or[/i] flaw multiple tasks in response to changing situational demands. The article includes practical examples of by what means the DC design can be used by dint of practitioners.

**********

Professional gymnasium counselors, teachers, and students ofttimes address multiple social, psychological, and academic affects These issues can overlap and vary in intensity across a wide range of adjoining matters For example, a school counselor intervening with a disruptive and inattentive pupil might aim to reduce the frequent occurrence of aggressive, antisocial behavior toward equals in a specific context, of the like kind as the school cafeteria. Concurrently the counselor and teacher might focus upon increasing that student's on-task behavior in the classroom, ostensibly leading to enhanced academic performance. In of that kind cases, professionals must prioritize and manage their intervention efforts and time. What, for example, are the primary and secondary foci of intervention for an individual student? After establishing these foci, seminary counselors must allocate resources accordingly to make secure intervention consistency or fidelity. Professionals also must monitor and evaluate intervention effectiveness with an organ of sight toward determining when and by what mode to shift intervention from single emphasis to other foci.

SMALL-N DESIGN PROMOT SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF RESEARCH upon INDIVIDUAL CHANGE

For nearly 50 years, researchers in counseling and related disciplines have used small-N (also known as single-subject) research designs to evaluate the efficacy of interventions designed to further change over time in individuals. Small-N designs have proven useful for evaluating intervention events in studies that (a) include single or a few students; (b) require ongoing, repeated measures of individual students' progres across time; and (c) apply interventions that look for to improve short-term and longterm consequences In fact, small-N designs proffer viable alternatives for demonstrating empirically the impact of interventions in studies that do not loan themselves to large-N, true- and quasi-experimental assemblage research designs (Cowan, Hennessey, Vierstra, & Rumrill, 2004) However, with notable exceptions, similar as the multiple baseline, small-N designs usually target a single behavior or pendent variable. Consequently, researchers would benefit from designs, and practitioners would benefit from approaches, that accommodate in what manner students change across time when faced with shifting conditions and multiple tasks.

The scientific status of research upon individual change emerged in the 1960 when investigators exhibited numerous small-N designs, particularly the reversal, multiple baseline, and changing criterion (CC) Concurrently applied behavior analysis emerg as a behavior change technology, and as a methodology to evaluate experimental ascendency of interventions that promote change in individuals above time (see, e.g., Baer, Wolf & Risley's 1968 seminal article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis). As Hartman and Hall (1976) noted, "The unfolding of experimental designs to demonstrate ascendency in individual case studies has been a crucial factor in bringing about scientific status to the application of mind of individuals" (p. 527).

Although a certain quantity of individuals have utilized small-N designs, feed Watson, Meeks, and Young (2002) advised practitioners and researchers in professional institute counseling to adopt and increase their use of these designs and cited uninjured rationales for doing so. Reasons for doing in like manner include the need to (a) document the mark of work that school counselors perform; (b) demonstrate if and in what manner school counseling interventions produce desirable outcomes; (c) demonstrate pragmatically and empirically the efficacy of interventions; (d) communicate clearly and accountably to other professionals, the public, and consumers; and (e) advance professionalism within and outside the field of seminary counseling. Most recently, in his "Editor's Top Ten Wish List," Lapan (2005) acknowledged the utility of small-N designs on the contrary lamented the "very small handful of studies" (p iii) submitted to Professional place of education Counseling.

Few fresh small-N designs have emerged since the fertile period, four decades ago, when design innovations flourished (McDougall, Hawkins, Brady, & Jenkins, in press) sum of two units decades ago, Kazdin (1982) conclud "Few variations of the changing criterion design have been developed" (p 159) Moreover, CC design innovations have not emerg in the sum of two units decades after Kazdin reached this conclusion (McDougall, Smith, Black, & Rumrill, 2005) lately the first author developed, named, and applied sum of two units innovations of the classic CC design called the range-bound changing criterion design (McDougall, 2005) and the distributed criterion design (McDougall, in press) We believe that the latter design proffers researchers a viable option for investigating multifaceted questions of interest in seminary counseling and related fields. Thus, the primary drift of this article is to introduce the distributed criterion (DC) design to the field of professional academy counseling. First, however, we review the classic CC because it constitutes a core ultimate part of the DC design and, we believe, the CC is an elegant, underutilized design and strategy.