Student Projects

Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

Group Projects

  1. Have students break into teams of four to six people. Have each of them be assigned to a specific social work agency or organization. Have them go discuss the potential for using single-subject design in this organization. Have them prepare for this meeting by writing a briefing about the strengths and weaknesses of the single-subject approach and how that could pertain specifically to the organization they are to work with.
     
  2. (Continuation of Group Project #1). Have students legitimately work with these social work agencies to develop the single-subject design proposed earlier. Have them work through designing how to collect the measures of the baseline phases as well as the treatment phase. They should keep running journal entries as to their trials, tribulations, and successes. This could easily be a semester long processes.
     
  3. Have students break into small groups of four to six people.  Have each group choose a topic relevant to social work (ex. intimate partner violence, homelessness, sexual abuse, childhood depression, elder abuse).  Have each group come up with an operational definition for their topic. Have the students detail how they would design a measure to reflect their operationalized definition.  Ask students to access research using single subject designs with their particular presenting issue.  Compare and contrast the measures the students develop with those used in the professional literature.
     
  4. Break the students into groups of four to six.  Have each group settle on a social work area to examine.  Have each group go to the library and gather four to six articles utilizing a single subject design with their area of interest.  Have each group read and critique each article.  Which do they view as the best? Worst? Have them present the best/worst to the other class members and defend their positions.
     

Mini Projects

1.  Review of Existing Literature

  1. Using online journal resources, identify articles that used single subject design.  Explain how this article contributed to the social work literature.  Would you use this design if you had a similar client system with a similar presenting issue?  Why or why not?  How did the author(s) manage the ethical considerations detailed in this chapter?
  2. Imagine that you had a client system with a similar presenting issue as the one discussed in the article you have identified in question one.   Explain how you would replicate this strategy with your client system.  Imagine your client had a different presenting issue. Would you employ the same single subject design?  Why or why not?  Explain in depth.

2.  Graphing and Analyzing Single Subject Designs   

  1. Choose a social work topic of interest to you.  Develop an operational definition of one of the concepts related to the topic (for example, depression in older adults is your topic of interest…crying episodes may be the concept…operationalize crying episodes).
  2. Now that you have your operational definition, imagine that you are gathering baseline data.  Are you examining frequency? Interval? Duration? Over what time period?  Graph the imagined results.  Time period will be on your X access with frequency, interval, or duration on your Y access.
  3. Graph each of the following with your imaginary data.
    1. AB design
    2. ABA design
    3. ABAB design
  4. Visually analyze the graphs.  Are you looking for trends? Variability? Levels?
  5. What potential problems might you encounter in your interpretation?                               

3. Recreating Baselines

  1. Find an article on a social work subject of interest that uses a single subject design. Choose one where natural baselines were used.
  2. Imagine an alternate reality where natural baselines were impossible.
  3. Design a methodology that could be used to estimate and recreate baselines for
  4. this study. Outline the research and data analysis process you would use.
  5. Write up two to three paragraphs detailing how you would justify these
  6. baselines to other researchers and academics.