Spring is in the air!

Not actual spring, mind you, since the temperature in New York has barely broken 20 degrees all winter, but the Spring 2014 semester!  We came back from SSWR in San Antonio energized - we had a really good interactive workshop AND we got to meet some other social workers who use R!

In the meantime, we have four sections of Practice Research going on at Wurzweiler this spring, and we thought we would let you know how our students are using SSD for R throughout the semester. 

Everyone teaches a little differently, but, over the years, we have both come to the conclusion that the best way to get students comfortable with using statistical software is to have them use it early, incrementally, and often.  The students don't get into analyzing their own data until later in the semester, so we start out with datasets that we use throughout our book and in our own research.

Charlie's class, which meets in person, has already created their first annotated graph of Jenny's yelling:

 

Pretty good for the first day of class, huh?

Wendy's class is a distance learning class (a big shout out to Moodle, which is making our lives infinitely easier this semester), so that section is more concerned right now with downloading R, RStudio, and SSD for R, since these students' computer labs are in their living rooms.  Once we have everyone on-board with that, we will be zipping right along.

We have both provided our students with an earlier draft of the manuscript for our book, so they can step through activities at home AND they will be able to refer back to the text throughout the semester when the students eventually analyze their own data.

Stay tuned - we both LOVE teaching this class (and our students enjoy taking it), so we will be blogging often about our students' progress.

In the meantime, feel free to check out our website and feel free to email us!

Goal!

Did we get your attention?  No, we are not talking football!  We are talking about the Gline() function, which is in the newest release of SSD for R, 1.4.1.  

After spending some time with John Orme and Terri Combs-Orme at CSWE in Dallas this past November, we thought that it would be a good idea to add a goal line to our graphing functions.  What does a goal line represent?  It displays a personal goal that you're aiming for in your work with your client/student/patient.

Here's an example for you:

Bobby is a child who is throwing temper tantrums at school.  The ultimate goal would be, of course, to eliminate these completely, but a shorter term objective is to decrease the tantrums to no more than one a day.  We can now visualize this:

By adding a goal line, we can see that in the baseline, Bobby met this goal three times, but met it or exceeded it fourteen times in the intervention.

If you haven't downloaded the newest version of SSD for R, do it now so you can use this slick new function!

If you haven't visited our website lately, come see us as www.ssdanalysis.com!

Busy, busy, busy!

We haven't posted for a while, but it's not that we have forgotten about this blog - just the opposite! We've been incredibly busy, and we didn't want to post again until we had the time to fill you in adequately.

In late October, we were down in Dallas for the Council on Social Work Education's Annual Program Meeting.  While we were given a VERY early time slot on the last day of the conference (7:30 am!), our session was well-attended, and another interesting discussion ensued.  In addition to demonstrating SSD for R, Dr. Susan Mason joined us and spoke about the relationship between theory, evidence-based practice, single-subject research.

And breaking news - the manuscript is FINISHED!  We've spent the last few days working with Oxford on abstracts, approving the layout of the book, etc. Of course we knew this was all coming, but we are incredibly excited that the book is going to production next week.  SSD for R: An R Package for Analyzing Single-Subject Data will be available for our students to use this summer semester.  Stay tuned - we will be excited to let you know when the book is officially for sale.

Next up - we will be going back to Texas in January to demonstrate SSD for R at the Society for Social Work and Research in San Antonio.  We are just hoping that the weather is better in Texas then than it is right now.

If we don't post again until 2014, we want to wish you all a healthy and happy New Year!

Charlie and Wendy Go To Washington

Not at all like the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but equally exciting - at least for us!

As you can imagine, things were a little touch and go as we prepared for our first presentation at the American Evaluation Association meeting.  After all, the Federal government had been shut down for 16 days and had just re-opened on Thursday.  We Amtracked it down to DC (is Amtracked a word?) on Friday and were scheduled to present on Saturday morning.

The conference, however, actually began prior to the re-opening of the Federal government, and we had already been warned that attendance would likely be low, sessions would be cancelled, etc.  We had already steeled ourselves for a less-than-stellar showing, especially since we were presenting on the last day of the conference, a less than ideal time slot.

We had never presented at AEA before so we have no idea how to gauge turnout at our session, but the presentation was exceptionally well received!  As was our goal, we were able to demonstrate SSD for R to a diverse audience.  We were lucky that Mansour Kazi, a colleague from The University at Albany who has written a seminal article in single-case research, was able to attend, but we also had evaluators from other disciplines show up, including medicine and education.

The presentation went very well, if we do say so ourselves.  Feel free to watch a version of our presentation here.  Lots of conversation ensued, even after the presentation ended, so we are hoping to start building a learning community where those of us interested in single-subject research have a virtual space to meet and talk.

That being said, if you have any suggestions for blog posts, feel free to contact us as ssdforr2013@gmail.com! Also, feel free to check out our website - it's growing regularly!

SSD for R Workshop #1

Next week, we are on tour!  Well, not the wait-on-line all night for tix kind of tour or, in the modern era, pummeling Ticketmaster.com repeatedly until you get the seats you want kind-of-tour.  This is more like the software developer/statistical-folks type of tour.

Actually, this is the first in a series of three workshops we are giving at conferences this year.  Next Saturday, October 19, we will be at The American Evaluation Association's Annual Conference in the Morgan Room at the Washington Hilton from 10:45 - 11:30.

Two weeks later, we will be at the Council on Social Work Education's APM at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas.  Our presentation is bright and early:  7:30 - 8:30 on Sunday, November 3 in the Edelweiss Room.

Then, we won't be presenting again until January, where we will be doing another workshop at Society for Social Work and Research's Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Three conferences tailored to three different audiences!  Join us and let us know what you think.  In the mean time, we will be posting our presentation slides on our website after each conference.

Lots and lots of activity

Well, the summer session ended and you would think that we had a little bit of a break, but we have been busy, busy, busy!

First, we received acceptances to present SSD for R at two different conferences and we are waiting to hear about a third.  In mid-October, we will be taking what seems to be our annual trek to Washington, DC, to present at the American Evaluation Association meeting.  At the end of October, we will be flying down to Dallas to present at the Council on Social Work Education's Annual Program Meeting.  At both of these conferences, we will be doing long-ish skills presentations.

The goal of both of these is to show people how to use SSD for R in their work as evaluators, professors,  and researchers.  Once the presentations are completed, we are planning to upload the PowerPoints to our website.  As each of these meetings get closer, we will let you know when and where we are doing our talks.  We would love for you to join us!

The second VERY EXCITING thing that we did was complete the first draft of our book, which we have finally given a working title:  SSD for R:  An R Package For Analyzing Single-Subject Data.  We sent the entire manuscript off to the wonderful folks at Oxford today.  The reviewers we had for our proposal were really helpful at giving suggestions that, we think, really strengthened the book overall, so we are looking forward to more helpful feedback in the coming weeks.

As usual, we look forward to hearing from you with any comments you may have.  Feel free to e-mail us!

Using SSD for R in the Classroom: Another final project

We hope you enjoyed Shmuel's final project in last week's post.  We thought that this week, we would share Arthur Zaczkiewicz's final project.  You may remember Arthur - he was our creative student that, in great British tradition, motivated his fellow students with his "Keep Calm and SSDforR On" meme.

Today, you will learn a little more about Arthur's work with one of his clients....

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At his agency, Arthur frequently works with clients who are in financial distress.  To help these clients, he has adapted a group financial literacy intervention, Making Ends Meet, for use with individuals.  One of these clients was JD.

Like many folks in recent years, JD has had a difficult time making ends meet.  JD was recently divorced.  He also reported sleep disruptions and anxiety, which he attributed to his financial troubles.  JD was $30,000 in debt, which was left over from his divorce.  JD had contemplated bankruptcy, but decided to attempt to address his financial difficulties first by reaching out to Arthur's agency.

Arthur decided to empirically measure his client's progress over time with two different indicators:  JD's sleep disruption and his level of anxiety.  Both of these were measured on a five-point self-anchoring scale with higher numbers indicating more dysfunction.

Below, you will see simple line graphs depicting JD's progress on both indicators prior to and after the introduction of the intervention:

Using visual analysis alone, it appears as if the intervention is improving both JD's sleep and level of anxiety, but we need to be careful in drawing conclusions!  For both these indicators, Arthur determined that autocorrelation was problematic and trending was a problem in some phases.  Therefore, strictly visual analysis could be misleading!

So.... WHAT IS AN INTERVENTION ANALYST TO DO?

Our recommendation is to look for both statistical significance AND clinical significance.

Because of data issues with trending and autocorrelation, Arthur chose to analyze his data statistically using the conservative dual criteria for both indicators.  Arthur's presentation of his findings for JD's sleep disruptions are shown below.  You will see both the graph and statistical output in his slide.

Well, while it looked like the intervention was making a difference, Arthur found NO statistical significance for JD's sleep disruption.  His findings were similar for JD's level of anxiety; however, Arthur examined clinical significance by looking at effect sizes for each indicator.  In both cases, the intervention produced moderate changes.

As a clinician, this analysis should help Arthur inform his work with JD.  Here are his conclusions:  

Arthur has made some very good points:

1)  Perhaps the intervention needs to continue for a longer period as the intervention seems to be moving the indicators in the right direction. We simply may not have enough data yet.

2)  In the future, it may be useful to examine indicators that are more closely associated with financial difficulties.

3)  Research support can help guide the use of this intervention for others in the future.

Our suggestions:

1)  Keep going, Arthur!  Now that you have learned how to analyze your client's progress, you can do this again and again!

2)  Share what you have learned with others.  You can share your findings with colleagues and others interested in financial literacy programs.  Present at conferences.  Try writing this up and submitting it to a journal.  We need to share what we learn with others.

3)  Continue collaborating with researchers and/or conduct your own research.  The more we look at what is happening in close interactions between clients and practitioners, the more effective we can be in our work.

For more information about SSD for R, check out our website.  And, as always, feel free to contact us!