Using SSD for R in the Classroom: Learning from our students

Over the past year or so, we have met almost all of you at one time or another in person so you probably know that we like to collaborate - with each other, with those interested in single-subject research, with those doing evaluations, and with our students.

During a class last week, one of Charlie's Master's students, Ezra Fromowitz, came up with a great little suggestion for SSD for R.  When you annotate a simple line graph using the ABstat function, which produces mean, median, and standard deviation lines, why not provide the value for the requested statistic in the Console?  This would make it much easier to further annotate the graph with useful information using the ABtext function.

Here's what Ezra meant:

Let's say we had created the line graph below depicting Jenny's crying episodes during class.  We created the line graph using the ABplot function, added the phase line using the ABlines function, and then labeled the phases using the ABtext function.

Perhaps, however, we would want to add a mean line for the phases.  We could add this by using the ABstat function.  The output in the Console now tells us that the mean for the baseline is 4.615 and the mean for the intervention is 1.591.  We can further annotate our graph to provide some really helpful output:

What an excellent suggestion, Ezra!  

Ezra's suggestion was so helpful that we have now added it to the SSD for R package, so be sure to install the latest version by selecting "Check for Updates" in the Packages pane of RStudio!

If you have any suggestions for making SSD for R better or more useful for you, feel free to email us. And, as always, check out our website because we are updating it frequently these days!

Getting ready for the book!

We are getting ready for the release of SSD for R:  An R Package for Analyzing Single-Subject Research.  We are really excited because we've had some fabulous conversations with folks at all the conferences we've been to this year, and we think this book will be really helpful in advancing single-subject research.

In any event, we have updated our website to make it more useful for book purchasers. In the book (and many of our students have read our manuscript) we have lots of examples using sample data, so we have added a tab to our website called "Datasets." 

Feel free to download the files when you get your book so you can step through each of the examples.

Also, if there is something you would like to see on our website, let us know by emailing us.

Charlie and Wendy

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.