SCD‐MVA : A mobile application for conducting single‐case experimental design research during the pandemic

Abstract

The COVID‐19 outbreak emphasizes the need for alternative methods for data gathering and collaboration among researchers in a virtual research environment. One experimental design that is well suited in a social distancing research context is the single‐case experimental design (SCD). SCDs can handle disruptions as (a) they do not require large groups gathering for data collection or intervention administration, (b) interventions are administered individually and in some cases remotely, (c) no comparison group is needed, and (d) they are adaptive and flexible designs. The purpose of this article is to introduce the mobile application, SCD‐MVA (2019), developed to assists in the design of an SCD, data gathering, data analysis, and remote collaboration. The application allows data management and data sharing among researchers, provides an in real time visualization of the gathered data, stimulates interaction between researchers in terms of designing the SCD, gathering the data, and analyzing the gathered data, and does all these things with no need for in‐person meetings of the research team.

The effect of the stress autism mate app on perceived stress, coping, and resilience in adults with autism: a single-case experimental design

“…Another strength of this study is the use of a SCED design. SCED allows all participants to experience the potential real-life benefits of the intervention ( 38 ). By eliminating the need for a comparison group, this design minimises variation between groups and facilitates the assessment of treatment response at an individual level ( 39 ).…”

Single-case experimental design.

“…These randomization-based methods can be appealing for testing the effect because they do not require modeling assumptions, such as temporal stability, independence, or normality (Edgington, 1980). In addition, software to conduct randomization tests is readily available (Gafurov & Levin, 2020;Bulté & Onghena, 2009), as is an application to facilitate masked visual analysis (Moeyaert et al, 2021). However, these randomization-based methods are limited to testing the null hypothesis of no treatment effect.…”

“…In addition, for researchers who have practical constraints preventing them from extending phases or who prefer a design that is not responsive to the data, the option of randomizing tran sition points is appealing. Finally, for researchers who would like to respond to their data to ensure stable baselines as well as randomize, there are approaches to do so, where the random assignments are made during rather than before the experiment (Ferron & Jones, 2006;Moeyaert et al, 2021).…”

How humans behave with emerging technologies during the COVID ‐19 pandemic?

“…The third section has three methodological articles , presenting three technological tools, (a) eMoodie for collecting mobile data passively (Domoff, Banga, Borgen, Foley, Robinson, Avery, Gentile, 2020), (b) SCD‐MVA for conducting single‐case experiments (Moeyaert, Bursali, Ferron, 2020), and (c) thematic maps for visualizing local COVID‐19 pandemic development (Li, 2020). The history of science indicates that methodological advances often lead to major research breakthroughs.…”