The overarching purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to the use of rigorous single-case research designs (SCRDs) in special education and related fields. Authors first discuss basic design types and research questions that can be answered with SCRDs, examine threats to internal validity and potential ways to control for and detect…

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…

Two studies regarding the graphic display of single case data are presented. First, measurement and graphical display of data from studies in highly-ranked journals in special education were assessed. Measurement of desirable behaviors rather than undesirable behaviors was common and most studies used sessions and percentages as x and y-values,…

Comparison studies conducted to determine which instructional interventions are most efficient for teaching discrete behaviors to individuals with disabilities are potentially valuable, although some threats to internal validity may be more likely in these studies. Studies included in this review typically met common internal validity standards,…