Recent Innovations in the Changing Criterion Design: Implications for Research and Practice in Special Education

In 1982, Schloss, Sedlack, Elliott, and Smothers published an article in The Journal of Special Education that illustrated “applications of the changing criterion designs to special education classrooms” (p. 361). These applications were based on the classic changing criterion (CC) research design, which Hartmann and Hall (1976) said was “initially named by Hall (1971) and illustrated by Weis and Hall (1971) [and] described, but unnamed by Sidman (1960, pp. 254–256)” (p. 527). For nearly half of a century, researchers have used the CC and other classic single-case designs, particularly the ABAB and multiple-baseline research designs, in special education and other settings. These single-case designs are very useful for evaluating experimental control in studies that (a) include one or a few students; (b) require ongoing, repeated, and quantitative measures of individual students’ progress across time; and (c) apply interventions that seek to improve students’ performance of socially valid, directly observable, and measurable target behaviors.