Single case design research in Special Education: Next generation standards and considerations

Authors

Jennifer R. Ledford

Joseph Lambert

James E. Pustejovsky

Kathleen N. Zimmerman

Nicole Hollins

Erin E. Barton

Published

November 22, 2022

Single case design has a long history of use for assessing intervention effectiveness for children with disabilities. Although these designs have been widely employed for more than 50 years, recent years have been especially dynamic in terms of growth in the use of single case design and application of standards designed to improve the validity and applicability of findings. This growth expanded possibilities and inspired new questions about the contributions this methodology can make to generalizable knowledge about intervention in special education. In this paper, we discuss and extend previous standards for studies using single case designs (i.e., Horner et al., 2005). We identify new suggestions for internal validity, generality and acceptability, and reporting. We also provide considerations for single case synthesis and discuss the complexities of assessing accumulating evidence for a given practice.

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Citation

BibTeX citation:
@article{ledford2022,
  author = {Ledford, Jennifer R. and Lambert, Joseph and Pustejovsky,
    James E. and Zimmerman, Kathleen N. and Hollins, Nicole and Barton,
    Erin E.},
  title = {Single Case Design Research in {Special} {Education:} {Next}
    Generation Standards and Considerations},
  journal = {Exceptional Children},
  volume = {89},
  number = {4},
  pages = {379-396},
  date = {2022-11-22},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1177/00144029221137656},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jsp.2018.02.003},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Ledford, J. R., Lambert, J., Pustejovsky, J. E., Zimmerman, K. N., Hollins, N., & Barton, E. E. (2022). Single case design research in Special Education: Next generation standards and considerations. Exceptional Children, 89(4), 379–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2018.02.003