| Context & Setting | 1 | The study describes critical features of the context or setting relevant to the review; for example, type of program or classroom, type of school. |
| Participant | 2 | The study describes participant demographics relevant to the review. |
| 3 | The study describes disability or risk status of the participants and method for determining status. | |
| Intervention agent | 4 | The study describes the role of the intervention agent and, as relevant to the review, background variables. |
| 5 | The study describes any specific training or qualifications required to implement the intervention, and indicates that the interventionist has achieved them. | |
| Description of practice | 6 | The study describes detailed intervention procedures and intervention agents’ actions, or cites one or more accessible sources that provide this information. |
| 7 | When relevant, the study describes materials, or cites one or more accessible sources providing this information. | |
| Implementation fidelity | 8 | The study assesses and reports implementation fidelity related to adherence using direct, reliable measures. |
| 9 | The study assesses and reports implementation fidelity related to dosage or exposure using direct, reliable measures. | |
| 10 | As appropriate, the study assesses and reports implementation fidelity (a) regularly throughout implementation of the intervention, and (b) for each interventionist, each setting, and each participant or other unit of analysis. If either adherence or dosage is assessed and reported, this item applies to the type of fidelity assessed. If neither adherence nor dosage is assessed and reported, this item is not applicable. | |
| Internal validity | 11 | The researcher controls and systematically manipulates the independent variable. |
| 12 | The study describes baseline(single-subject studies) or control/comparison(group comparison studies) conditions, such as the curriculum, instruction, and interventions. | |
| 13 | Control/comparison-condition or baseline-condition participants have no or extremely limited access to the treatment intervention. | |
| 14 | The design provides at least three demonstrations of experimental effects at three different times. | |
| 15 | For single-subject research designs with a baseline phase(alternating treatment designs do not require a baseline), all baseline phases include at least three data points(except when fewer are justified by study author due to reasons such as measuring severe or dangerous problem behaviors and zero baseline behaviors with no likelihood of improvement without intervention) and establish a pattern that predicts undesirable future performance. | |
| 16 | The design controls for common threats to internal validity so plausible, alternative explanations for findings can be reasonably ruled out. Commonly accepted designs such as reversal(ABAB), multiple-baseline, changing criterion, and alternating treatment address this quality indicator when properly designed and executed, although other approaches can be accepted if study authors justify how they ruled out alternative explanations for findings or control for common threats to internal validity. | |
| Outcome measure/ Dependent variable | 17 | Outcomes are socially important. |
| 18 | The study clearly defines and describes measurement of the dependent variables. | |
| 19 | The study reports the effects of the intervention on all measures of the outcome targeted by the review(graphed data for single-subject studies), not just those for which a positive effect is found. | |
| 20 | Frequency and timing of outcome measures are appropriate. For most single-subject studies, a minimum of three data points per phase is necessary if a given phase is to be considered as part of a possible demonstration of experimental effect (except when fewer are justified by study author due to reasons such as measuring severe or dangerous problem behaviors and zero baseline behaviors with no likelihood of improvement without intervention). For alternating treatment designs, at least four repetitions of the alternating sequence are required. | |
| 21 | The study provides evidence of adequate internal reliability, interobserver reliability, test-retest reliability, or parallel-form reliability, as relevant(e.g., score reliability coefficient ≥ .80, interobserver agreement ≥ 80%, kappa ≥ 60%). | |
| Data analysis | 22 | The study provides a single-subject graph clearly representing outcome data across all study phases for each unit of analysis(e.g., individual, classroom, other group of individuals) to enable determination of the effects of the practice. Regardless of whether the study report includes visual or other analyses of data, graphs depicting all relevant dependent variables targeted by the review should be clear enough for reviewers to draw basic conclusions about experimental control using traditional visual analysis techniques. |