To count demonstrations of effect in a single-case design, map each planned opportunity where the outcome pattern should change in temporal relation to the independent variable. Count evidence according to the exact reversal, multiple-baseline, alternating-treatment, or changing-criterion logic. Data points, participants, phases, and effect-size calculations are not interchangeable with demonstrations. Record every opportunity, including weak or contradictory comparisons.
Map every planned opportunity
List each phase boundary, tier start, criterion change, or condition alternation that should provide design-relevant evidence.
Write the predicted direction
State the outcome change expected at each opportunity, including reversals when a condition is withdrawn.
Judge observed evidence separately
Record strong, weak, absent, delayed, or contradictory patterns for each planned opportunity.
Avoid unit confusion
Keep observations, phases, cases, participants, comparisons, and demonstrations in separate fields.
Apply the exact design standard
Confirm how the current review framework treats the design, phase count, data points, and independence of demonstrations.
Build Idris's demonstration map
For the count demonstrations of effect single-case design question, create a versioned demonstration map. 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 Idris's evidence without relying on a summary score.
Work through Idris's replication example
Idris's ABAB graph has medians A1 = 2, B1 = 8, A2 = 3, and B2 = 9. The three condition changes create three planned opportunities: A1 to B1, B1 to A2, and A2 to B2. Each shows movement in the predicted direction. The graph therefore contains three observed demonstrations under the reversal logic, subject to full visual and design review. Display every value, phase, denominator, and time sequence. This fictional home leisure-engagement reversal study example illustrates one evidence pattern and does not establish a universal phase length, effect threshold, functional relation, treatment recommendation, or review outcome.
Audit Idris's design evidence
Idris's map lists the four phases, three boundaries, predicted direction for each, observed pattern, carryover concern, implementation record, and visual-review judgment. It does not count eight data points, two B phases, or one participant as alternative totals. 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 Idris's main inference risk
A design may contain three opportunities while only two show a convincing effect. Reporting three demonstrations because three boundaries exist confuses planned opportunity with observed evidence. Idris's map preserves both counts. 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 Idris
The reviewer verifies that withdrawing and reintroducing the condition was safe, acceptable, and actually delivered. The report states which current standard or methods framework governed the demonstration count. 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 Idris's access and participation
Keep Idris's augmentative and alternative communication, interpreters, mobility, food, water, bathroom use, prescribed care, health support, rest, relationships, and emergency help available throughout the home leisure-engagement reversal 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 Idris's review
Idris's source card ties demonstration counting to temporally related replications in the specific design rather than a generic numerical slogan. 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 Idris's review process
Before live use, run the demonstration map 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 Idris's claim review
Review the demonstration map with Idris, 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 Evaluate Consistency Across Single-Case Replications
- How to Identify a Basic Effect in Adjacent Single-Case Phases
- How to Interpret a Delayed Effect After a Single-Case Phase Change
- How to Audit a Functional-Relation Claim in a Single-Case Study
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