St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN 56301-4498, USA.
Behav Modif. 2011 Nov;35(6):531-52. doi: 10.1177/0145445511415396. Epub 2011 Aug 26.
The authors assessed the extent to which multielement designs produced false positives using continuous duration recording (CDR) and interval recording with 10-s and 1-min interval sizes. Specifically, they created 6,000 graphs with multielement designs that varied in the number of data paths, and the number of data points per data path, using a random number generator. In Experiment 1, the authors visually analyzed the graphs for the occurrence of false positives. Results indicated that graphs depicting only two sessions for each condition (e.g., a control condition plotted with multiple test conditions) produced the highest percentage of false positives for CDR and interval recording with 10-s and 1-min intervals. Conversely, graphs with four or five sessions for each condition produced the lowest percentage of false positives for each method. In Experiment 2, they applied two new rules, which were intended to decrease false positives, to each graph that depicted a false positive in Experiment 1. Results showed that application of new rules decreased false positives to less than 5% for all of the graphs except for those with two data paths and two data points per data path. Implications for brief assessments are discussed.
作者评估了多元素设计在使用连续时长记录 (CDR) 和 10 秒和 1 分钟间隔大小的间隔记录时产生假阳性的程度。具体来说，他们使用随机数生成器创建了 6000 个具有不同数据路径数量和每个数据路径数据点数的多元素设计的图表。在实验 1 中，作者对图表进行了视觉分析，以确定假阳性的发生情况。结果表明，对于 CDR 和间隔记录（10 秒和 1 分钟间隔），每个条件仅显示两个会话的图表（例如，用多个测试条件绘制的对照条件）产生的假阳性百分比最高。相反，对于每个条件具有四个或五个会话的图表，对于每种方法，产生的假阳性百分比最低。在实验 2 中，他们将两种旨在减少假阳性的新规则应用于实验 1 中显示假阳性的每个图表。结果表明，对于除了具有两个数据路径和每个数据路径两个数据点的图表之外，应用新规则将假阳性减少到了 5%以下。讨论了简短评估的含义。
