To audit a functional relation in a single-case study, trace the claim from the operational measure and raw graph through design logic, adjacent-phase effects, planned replications, timing, implementation, and alternative explanations. Verify the exact review standard, preserve inconsistent evidence, and separate experimental control from clinical importance or generalization. A score, software label, or favorable average cannot replace the design record.
Lock the claim sentence
Write the proposed causal statement and its population, target, condition, setting, and time scope before grading evidence.
Trace every measurement source
Verify definitions, units, opportunities, missingness, observer agreement, authorship, timestamps, and graph transformations.
Map effects and replications
List every planned demonstration, observed phase pattern, implementation record, and inconsistency.
Test alternative explanations
Review history, maturation, carryover, reactivity, measurement change, cointervention, access, and response-guided timing.
Assign a claim-level disposition
Approve, narrow, hold, or reject the wording with named reviewers, rationale, unresolved evidence, and next action.
Build Remy's functional-relation claim audit
For the audit functional relation single-case study question, create a versioned functional-relation claim audit. Preserve the target definition, unit, opportunity or observation time, raw series, graph, phase boundaries, design logic, predicted changes, planned demonstrations, actual implementation, measurement quality, client input, access and safety evidence, context, reviewer judgments, and claim status. The record should let another qualified reviewer reconstruct Remy's evidence without relying on a summary score.
Work through Remy's replication example
Remy's three tiers show immediate level changes in two settings. The third changes gradually before implementation, and observer agreement is missing for two boundary sessions. A pooled effect summary is positive, yet the audit holds the functional-relation claim because one replication and critical measurement evidence remain ambiguous. Display every value, phase, denominator, and time sequence. This fictional multisite self-advocacy study example illustrates one evidence pattern and does not establish a universal phase length, effect threshold, functional relation, treatment recommendation, or review outcome.
Audit Remy's design evidence
Remy's file maps each claim sentence to definitions, source records, graph version, phase pair, replication, fidelity data, agreement evidence, contextual events, analysis output, and reviewer decision. It records hold, revise, or approve at the claim level rather than assigning one status to the entire article. The audit also checks graph axes, session spacing, invalid and missing states, implementation fidelity, condition discriminability, carryover, definition changes, concurrent events, software settings, and correction history. A missing field does not become a negative value or disappear from the denominator.
Address Remy's main inference risk
Publication pressure can turn two strong tiers and one weak tier into a clean narrative. Remy's audit keeps the third tier, missing agreement, and pre-intervention movement visible and prevents software from approving causal wording automatically. Reviewers describe the raw pattern first, then the narrower conclusion it supports. A clinical improvement can be real and valuable even when the design cannot attribute it confidently, and a strong experimental contrast can still lack personal importance.
Decide the next evidence step for Remy
The team can repair future measurement, add a planned replication when appropriate, narrow the claim, or report inconclusive evidence. Remy's goals, voice, benefits, burdens, and adverse effects remain part of clinical interpretation. The responsible clinician and methodologist choose any added observation, replication, design change, or claim revision. The choice protects needed care, uses prospectively stated rules where possible, and preserves the original graph and decision history.
Protect Remy's access and participation
Keep Remy's augmentative and alternative communication, interpreters, mobility, food, water, bathroom use, prescribed care, health support, rest, relationships, and emergency help available throughout the multisite self-advocacy study. Use accessible consent and assent processes when applicable and respond to withdrawal, dissent, or distress. A replication plan never supplies authority to withhold a necessary support or delay urgent action.
Apply current sources to Remy's review
Remy's source trail combines current review standards, visual-analysis protocols, and design-method research at the exact claim level. The BACB ethics hub and CASP public summary provide professional context, while the BCBA Test Content Outline identifies examination content on measurement and single-case design. The WWC Version 5.0 handbook supplies a current research-review framework. A single-case design review, systematic visual-analysis protocols, current analytic reflections, nonconcurrent multiple-baseline methods research, and a visual-analysis software tutorial describe methods and limits. ASHA supports continuous AAC access.
Rehearse Remy's review process
Before live use, run the functional-relation claim audit on fictional graphs with a strong effect, weak effect, delayed effect, opposite trend, carryover, missing agreement, one contradictory tier, and no replication. Confirm that reviewers preserve raw values, count planned opportunities separately from observed demonstrations, identify holds, and keep client relevance distinct from causal inference. Store test cases, expected decisions, software version, and correction log.
Close Remy's claim review
Review the functional-relation claim audit with Remy, the responsible clinician, and a methodologist familiar with the exact design. Preserve raw data, graph, design protocol, basic effects, demonstrations, fidelity, measurement checks, contextual events, client input, reviewer disagreements, source standard, final wording, and limits. Keep the page draft and noindex until all manifest-named reviews are complete.
Related resources
- How to Identify a Basic Effect in Adjacent Single-Case Phases
- How to Compare Concurrent and Nonconcurrent Multiple-Baseline Evidence
- How to Count Demonstrations of Effect in a Single-Case Design
- How to Interpret Nonoverlap Without Replication in a Single-Case Design
Sources
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Information and Ethics Codes
- Council of Autism Service Providers, ABA Practice Guidelines Version 3.0 public summary
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- What Works Clearinghouse Procedures and Standards Handbook, Version 5.0
- Single-Case Design, Analysis, and Quality Assessment for Intervention Research
- Systematic Protocols for the Visual Analysis of Single-Case Research Data
- Advancing the Application and Use of Single-Case Research Designs
- Examining and Enhancing the Methodological Quality of Nonconcurrent Multiple-Baseline Designs
- A Tutorial for Software Options to Aid in Assessing Functional Relations in Single-Case Experimental Designs
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication