How to Review Carryover Between Single-Case Phases

Carryover between single-case phases occurs when effects or experiences from an earlier condition persist into the next phase. Define the plausible mechanism and duration, preserve transition points, and inspect skill durability, medication or physiological effects, prompting history, setting cues, and sequence. Carryover can weaken reversals and rapid alternation. It may also represent a valued lasting benefit that should never be removed solely for cleaner data.

Name the persistence mechanism

Describe skill learning, physiological action, setting history, prompting, generalization, or another plausible source of carryover.

Define a transition review period

Choose a clinically meaningful observation window and display every point without shifting the boundary.

Inspect sequence dependence

Compare whether a condition behaves differently depending on what came before and how much time elapsed.

Protect lasting benefits

Do not withdraw communication, safety, health, mobility, or effective supports merely to improve experimental contrast.

Choose a compatible design

Use a design that can tolerate or avoid expected persistence and state any washout assumptions explicitly.

Build Micah's carryover review

For the carryover between single-case phases question, create a versioned carryover review. 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 Micah's evidence without relying on a summary score.

Work through Micah's replication example

Micah's baseline values are 2, 2, 3, and 2, followed by intervention values 8, 9, 9, and 8. After withdrawal, values are 8, 7, 5, and 3. The gradual return suggests persistence into A2. Treating A2 as an immediate reversal would misdescribe the transition and could overstate the later reintroduction effect. Display every value, phase, denominator, and time sequence. This fictional home daily-living 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 Micah's design evidence

Micah's review records phase sequence, transition dates, skill practice, prompts, generalization, access supports, health factors, and the four A2 values. It separates a durable acquired skill from temporary residual exposure and notes that either can limit reversal logic. 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 Micah's main inference risk

Removing an effective or necessary support can be unsafe, unethical, or clinically pointless. Micah's design gate lets welfare, assent, clinical value, and skill irreversibility rule out withdrawal even when the graph would be methodologically convenient. 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 Micah

The team may choose a multiple-baseline, component, alternating-treatment with appropriate washout, or descriptive design that fits the expected persistence. It documents how carryover affects every comparison. 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 Micah's access and participation

Keep Micah's augmentative and alternative communication, interpreters, mobility, food, water, bathroom use, prescribed care, health support, rest, relationships, and emergency help available throughout the home daily-living 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 Micah's review

Micah's sources frame carryover as a design and interpretation issue while preserving the person's clinical gains and participation rights. 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 Micah's review process

Before live use, run the carryover review 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 Micah's claim review

Review the carryover review with Micah, 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.