Case Study

Based on your understanding of a multiple-baseline design across settings, how should the researcher apply the bitter-tasting polish intervention across the workplace, car, and living room? What specific pattern of results would demonstrate that the polish is responsible for the reduction in nail-biting?

Case context: A clinical researcher is trying to reduce a client's severe nail-biting habit using a behavioral intervention that involves wearing a clear, bitter-tasting polish. The researcher decides to use a multiple-baseline design across settings, selecting the client's workplace, their car during the daily commute, and their living room at home as the three environments.

Question: Based on your understanding of a multiple-baseline design across settings, how should the researcher apply the bitter-tasting polish intervention across the workplace, car, and living room? What specific pattern of results would demonstrate that the polish is responsible for the reduction in nail-biting?

Sample answer: The researcher should first establish a baseline rate of nail-biting in all three settings without any polish. Then, they should introduce the polish in one setting (e.g., the workplace) while maintaining the baseline conditions in the car and living room. After a set period, they introduce the polish in the car, and finally in the living room, staggering the treatment times. To demonstrate the polish is responsible, the frequency of nail-biting should decrease in the workplace only when the polish is introduced there, decrease in the car only when introduced there, and decrease in the living room only when introduced there.

Key points:

  • Establish a baseline for the target behavior in the workplace, car, and living room.
  • Introduce the intervention at staggered times across the three settings.
  • The behavior must change in a specific setting only after the intervention is applied in that specific setting.
  • Observing this staggered change across environments demonstrates that the intervention, rather than an unrelated event, caused the reduction in behavior.

Rubric: Full credit is given for explaining that baseline data must be collected in all three settings simultaneously, followed by staggered introduction of the treatment, and noting that the target behavior must change in each setting only after the treatment is applied there.

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Updated 2026-05-27

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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU

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