INVITED BOOK REVIEW OF SINGLE‐CASE EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS: STRATEGIES FOR STUDYING BEHAVIOR CHANGE BY MICHEL HERSEN AND DAVID H. BARLOW

Abstract

He has written other chapters on evaluation and methodology and has contributed arti-cles on measurement to professional journals. He is currently interested in the evalua-tion of behavioral applications to social problems. -EDITOR This book, Single-case experimental designs: strategies for studying behavior change by Her-sen and Barlow, will effectively serve its pur-pose, which is to provide a source book of single-case experimental design strategies, including guidelines for their use in applied research, state-ments of the basic goals in single-case research, and procedures required for successful execution of single-case designs. This book should be carefully studied by students of applied behavior analysis and would benefit researchers and prac-titioners in other areas of psychology as well. Its presentation of single-case experimental designs provides ample illustrations, shows strengths, weaknesses, advantages and disad-vantages, highlights basic issues in research strategies, maintains a relatively unbiased tol-erance for nonsingle-case designs, and is written in a clear and concise style. Beyond the detailed description of single-case designs, Hersen and Barlow discuss some central issues in the design of research into clinical, behavioral disorders. For this reviewer, and seemingly for the authors as well, the para-mount issue concerns the generality of findings from single-case experiments. Neither this book, nor any other single book, will resolve the com-plicated design matters surrounding the gen-erality issue. Only with the gradual accrual of research data over time will the generality issue be satisfactorily addressed. But, for now the authors provide the concerned reader with con-siderable food for thought about the generality-of-findings issue. In fact, this reviewer considers this issue sufficiently important to recommend that the first chapter to be read might well be the final chapter on replication, which is at the heart of the generality issue. There are several reasons. First, much of the polemic surrounding the single-case versus group design issue in behavioral research involves the generality-of-findings issue. Second, behavioral interventions designed to ameliorate clinical or behavioral disorders experienced a heyday in the 1960s