USE OF POOLED TIME-SERIES IN THE STUDY OF NATURALLY-OCCURRING CLINICAL EVENTS AND PROBLEM BEHAVIOR IN A FOSTER-CARE SETTING

Pooled time series is an underused analytic technique with the potenti al to increase researchers' ability to exploit clinical data. This art icle demonstrates the value of pooled time series by analyzing the beh avior of youths in a specialized foster care treatment setting in resp onse to a naturally occurring clinical event: changes in the number of youths living together in a treatment foster care setting. Pooled tim e series moves beyond typical clinical analyses with an increased capa bility of controlling statistically for complex within-subject effects and with a clinically useful measure of effect size. The complexity o f the intrasubject data made it virtually impossible to determine the relevant significance (i.e., clinical meaning) of the clinical event b y the use of standard n = 1 visual analysis procedures or standard sta tistical methods (e.g., chi square). After things such as autocorrelat ion and individual time trends were statistically controlled, each add itional youth increased the number of problematic behaviors by one beh avior per youth per day on the Parent Daily Report.