Which design is characterized by its use of multiple baselines across different subject, settings, or behaviors to demonstrate the effects of an intervention?

• A. Reversal
• B. Withdrawal
• C. Multiple Baseline
• D. Alternating Treatment

Answer: (C)

Multiple baseline designs demonstrate an intervention’s effects by staggering its introduction across several baselines—across different subjects, settings, or behaviors. You collect baseline data on all targets, then implement the intervention first for one target while the others remain in baseline, and continue introducing it to the remaining targets at later times. If changes in the target occur only after the intervention starts for that target, and these changes align with the introduction schedule across baselines, you gain strong evidence that the intervention causes the observed improvements rather than external factors like time or events affecting everyone.

This approach avoids the need to withdraw treatment, which is helpful when reversals would be unethical or impractical and when you want to show consistent effects across multiple targets. It also helps control for threats to internal validity such as history or maturation, because changes are tied to the staggered introduction of the intervention rather than happening uniformly over time.