How did the Treatment Work for Robin? And for Dylan? Studying Individual Youth Treatment Mediators Using Single-Case Experimental Designs

Abstract

Study of individual treatment mechanisms in youth interventions facilitates evidence-based development, selection and implementation of treatment components that are most effective for each individual child. This position paper aims to bring together two important topics from the area of youth intervention research: mediators of treatment outcomes and single-case experimental design methodology. We start by outlining the benefits of studying within-person mechanisms and propose how statistical mediation analysis and single-case methods can be integrated to enable this type of research. Further, we review existing methodology for the study of individual youth treatment mechanisms and provide recommendations for the clinical practice research.