 We're gonna switch gears a little bit because we've talked quite a bit about different design types and I want you to know that there's something cool that you can do with all of these things which is combine them. They don't have to stand alone. This is where you get to use your brain. So just because the book says you have to have an ABA or an ABAB or a BAB or a multiple baseline or an alternating treatment design or a changing criterion design or whatever design it is, whatever design it is that you're working with, it does not mean you have to use them alone. The book can't possibly, the books can't possibly go into all the different design types that you could combine because it's functionally unlimited. Let me give you an example. So several years ago, I was interested, a student approached me with replicating an old study. That old study was the Hawthorne Effect study where looking at the effects of lighting on employees' behavior performance in a factory type setting. Long, long time ago. What they found out was, this was the study that led to the Hawthorne Effect where they found out just being a part of the experiment, just being observed as changing their behavior. But the lighting question was an interesting one. The student, Mark Olson, had a great question about what effects does the lighting have on the college classroom? So, bopping. All right. How low we can do that? Mark sounds good. Let's design it for next quarter. So we did. All right. So what do we do? We had all sorts of things. First off, we knew that we wanted to use reversals. We wanted to use the ABAB, right? Switching back and forth between the lighting conditions. So lights off in one condition, lights on in another condition. Lights off in one condition, lights off in the suit. You're just going off and on all quarter long. So we had lights on for one week, lights off for the next week. But we thought we should probably capture a baseline on the different behaviors that we were recording. So we were looking at several different behaviors. I don't remember if it was five. But we were looking at a few different behaviors on attentiveness in the classroom, a relative position of the students in their chair. Like, were they slouching? Were they sitting up? Were they attentive? Were they making notes? All sorts of little things. And we used a momentary time sample to capture the data. Why? Because the two observers in the classroom were recording data on five individuals. So every two minutes they would look up and they would track the behavior of those five individuals and they would make a note. Every two minutes. It's a ten week long quarter. Every two minutes we captured data on five people. That's a lot of data. So, but we thought, you know what? That's not enough data. We better do it across two classrooms. So we set up a multiple baseline. So the first baseline was lights on, just like in a typical class. And the next baseline was lights on, just like we'd expect in a typical class. Except then we started our phase changes. So we went to B and we offset that B for the second group, right? So you get the idea? We carried baseline longer for the second group or for the second classroom, but we did the same in their inventions. So then what it ended up being was then in various classrooms, everything was offset. That if it was lights on in classroom A, it was lights off in classroom B. So we actually had a multiple baseline with a reversal design. Sorry, with a withdrawal design built in. And we tracked behavior using a momentary time sample. It's a huge amount of data. And we found out there's not much difference in behavior. There was some, but ultimately there was not a ton of difference in behavior. And part of that we think was the confound of the fact that the classrooms had windows in them. And in the classrooms were offered during the day. So even when you told them the classes were offered in the day. So even when you totally turned the lights off, you still had a little bit of ambient light in the classroom. We tried to minimize it, but we did the best we could. The point being that notice we combined a multiple baseline and we combined it with a reversal design or withdrawal design. So you don't have to worry about making sure you fit into some particular box. That's your starting point. Then you can take all those boxes or blocks as you might want to think and start building on them. So you could do things like reversal design or withdrawal designs. Then you could do things with like adding changing criteria to that. Then you could add multiple element designs. Or you could do things like multiple baselines with randomized alternating treatment designs. There's so much you can do. Some of it doesn't make any sense. I'm kind of just spewing things together here. But you're limited by the logic. You're not limited by the name of the design. So I just want you to remember that really the building blocks of this research, of this field are the AB design or specifically the ABA design. So you can get that functional relation established. And from there, you add the multiple baseline design and you add your alternating treatments. And you can start to take all of those pieces and mix and match and have some fun with it. Because you might be able to come up with a new design type or a design that answers a specific question that you may have that isn't traditionally answered in a traditional fashion with something like an withdrawal design. So I'm trying to express that you shouldn't just be limited by these labels. Find the logic. Understand the logic. Then the labels are largely irrelevant. Then you start to figure out how to do experimentation. And I know most of you watching this are not going to be experimental psychologists. You're not going to be doing this work in the laboratory. But the sooner you start to learn the logic of it and the more you focus on what I'm getting at right now, it'll make functional analyses that much easier. So you don't have to be constrained by these rigid lines when you're doing these types of this type of work. There is more to it than that. There's more nuance. And there's more freedom than what you might originally think. So anyway, combine these things. Have fun. Come up with some cool designs on your own. Make sure they're logically sound, of course, by comparing it to the logic of the ones that currently exist. So there you go. Subscribe. Share.