University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA.
Behav Modif. 2021 Sep;45(5):695-714. doi: 10.1177/0145445520903049. Epub 2020 Jan 30.
The adapted alternating treatments design is a commonly used experimental design in skill acquisition research. This design allows for the evaluation of two or more independent variables on responding to unique target sets. Equating target sets is necessary to ensure a valid comparison of the independent variables. To date, there is little guidance on best practice when equating target sets and it is unclear how researchers have done so previously. We reviewed the reported methods used to equate target sets in articles published using the adapted alternating treatments design in five behavior-analytic journals. Just over half of the studies published using the adapted alternating treatments design reported any method to equate target sets and the methods varied considerably. Alternative methods, such as random assignment, were prevalent. Considerations for best practice and avenues for future research are discussed.
适应交替治疗设计是技能获取研究中常用的实验设计。这种设计允许对响应独特目标集的两个或多个独立变量进行评估。使目标集相等是确保对独立变量进行有效比较的必要条件。迄今为止，关于如何使目标集相等的最佳实践指导很少，也不清楚研究人员以前是如何做到的。我们审查了在五个行为分析期刊上发表的使用适应交替治疗设计的文章中报告的用于使目标集相等的方法。在使用适应交替治疗设计发表的研究中，只有略多于一半的研究报告了任何使目标集相等的方法，而且方法差异很大。替代方法，如随机分配，很普遍。讨论了最佳实践的考虑因素和未来研究的途径。
