Terms of Experimental Design (Section D) You Must know in BCBA Exam
As a behavioral analyst or any psychological-related student, the university must have taught you foundational terms and knowledge of experimental design. If you still remember all the terms and knowledge, lucky for you, because Section D in BCBA Exam is all about questions of experimental design. If you don’t remember them, or only remember some of them, Don’t worry! In this article, we will talk about key experimental design terms that you must know for BCBA exam. We will talk about it in order of the Section D task list. Since there are many terms in this section, this article will be divided into 2 parts, and we will talk about D-1 to D-3 today. It’s never too late to start your revision. If you wish to practice more BCBA experimental design questions, you can visit this website to get more help! Let’s start now.
The Task list for Section D in BCBA exam is below:
D-1: Distinguish between dependent and independent variables
D-2: Distinguish between external and internal validity
D-3: Identifying defining features of single-subject experimental design
D-4: Describe the advantages of single-subject experimental designs compared to group design.
D-5: Use single-subject experimental designs
D-6: Describe rationales for conducting comparative, component, and parametric analyses.
D-1: Dependent and Independent Variables
1) Dependent variables:
This refers to the behavior that the intervention is intended to change.
In a clinical context, understanding the dependent variable (target behavior) is important because many goals of clinical practice are to identify what can make changes to the target behavior. For instance, if a child always cries in public sites, this behavior is the dependent variable that is aimed for intervention.
2) Independent variables
As complementation, independent variables are what affect dependent variables, which is what can make changes in target behavior.
In a clinical context, identifying independent variables will help the behavioral analyst understand what impact the target behavior the most, and then has a subsequent intervention. For instance, the crying of the child in public sites is due to he/she afraid of crowds, then the crowd is one of the independent variables.
D-2: External and Internal Validity
1) Internal Validity
This term refers to the experiments showing intervention or treatment has a convincing impact that changes the behavior.
Please note: it must be confirmed that this change is not due to any uncontrolled factors. Take a life example, when your home doesn’t have an air conditioner, you are sure that the only thing that changes your room temperature is the outside temperature. Under clinical context, when the child only stops crying in public sites when his/her mother is with her, the analyst can ensure that the mother is the reason for child stop crying, not the other unknown reasons.
2) External Validity
How much the experiment’s result can be generalized to other behavior, subjects, or experimental settings.
For instance, the mother can also help the baby to have stable emotions on other occasions. And this observation may also apply to other babies.
D-3: Features of Single-subject Experimental Design (E.g individuals serve as their own controls, repeated measures, prediction, verification, replication)
1) Individuals Serve as Their own Controls
This term refers to when the effects of an intervention are assessed on an individual rather than comparing one person who received the intervention (therapy) to another, that person acts as their own control in the research study (control). Because the study issue is addressed differently than in other types of research, the individual is basically allocated to both the treatment and the control group when using single subject technique.
Using subject as their own control plays a significant role in the behavioral analysis due to clients often have unique personalities and idiosyncrasies. The aim of behavioral analysts is to study individuals’ behaviors and how they interact environment. That’s what makes single subject methodology widely used in the field of behavioral psychology
2) Repeated Measure
When behavioral analysts apply single-subject experiments, they need to capture the dependent variable (target behavior) to measure it many times through carefully defining the target behaviors and recording instances of target behaviors.
This step is really important in single-subject experiments. Behaviors have trends and levels. If we only measure target behavior once or twice, the data is not enough for us to thoroughly understand the behavior.
3) Prediction
Prediction is to make an estimated guess of the trend of data or the future of behavior under same condition (keep all variables same) based on the existed data.
Under clinical context, behavior analysts often predict the target behavior to decide what is the independent variables in a new experimental design.
4) Verification
Verification involves proving that baseline behavior levels would have persisted in the absence of the independent variable (intervention). Beyond knowledgeable estimates, it’s critical to logically prove that our interventions are responsible for the necessary behavior modification for the customer.
5) Replication
By replicating the experiment over time, replication can show how strong an independent variable affects behavior.
The reason replication matters is because when every time a plausible association between two variables is proven, the likelihood that “chance” or some other factor was primarily responsible for the relationship between the dependent and independent variables decreases. Within a research design, replication can take various forms, but the fundamental premise remains the same.
A Short Summary
The terms of experimental design, to most behavioral analysts’ experiences, are easier to remember because you will automatically remember them if you understand them practically! So when looking at all the definitions in this article, please also read carefully the explanations since they provide you with real-life examples to help you digest the terms more thoroughly!
Above are all the foundational terms you need to know for D-1 to D-3. This article will have a Part 2 to talk about the terms and definitions of D-4 to D-6. If you wish to look at it, please visit www.bcbamockexam.com! Besides helpful weekly blogs, this website also provides you with premium BCBA exam study packages. You can try lots of real exam questions here, and also different sets of mock exams! Enjoy your revision and good luck with your BCBA exam!
