[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I am not sure how familiar you are with experimental design.There is a > design classified as an ABAB where A stands for baseline and B the > intoduction of the treatment.Behavior will be different under those > two conditions.The second A designates a return to baseline.It is > obvious that the shooter had returned to baseline due to the absence > of the treatment condition(his medication).
As so aptly pointed out by Paul Brandon, this is not a valid (or even close to valid) ABAB design. At best, according to Michael above, this is an ABA design -- off meds, on meds, off meds. Of course, I don't recall reading that the individual under question in this case, committed a mass murder under the first condition or had been previously arrested for planning such a murder. Therefore, this would be at best an AB (on meds; off meds) design. Michael also wrote: > Not if you use the subject as his or her own control. The > interactional variables(ironically) are held constant. Hmmmmm . . . what would Shadish, Cook, and Campbell (2001) say about this? Michael suggests that this individual lived in a vacuum whereby the only environmental factors impacting the individual are unique to the individual. However, history can act as an experimental treatment and threatens the internal validity of any study that occurs over time without appropriate experimental controls. It could have been the freaky weather that the midwest was experiencing, the historical presidential campaigns, an odd alignment of planets, etc. or a host of factors not unique to the perpetrator that may have lead to the shooting. As Chris Green posits, "this situation is FAR more complicated than whether one takes drugs." Moreover, as stressed by Steven Specht, the issue of variability is an issue. There are vast numbers of individuals who go off meds and don't shoot people, vast numbers of folks not on meds who don't shoot people, and vast numbers of folks on meds who don't shoot people. Perhaps, a more important question is why are so many mass shootings are going on in the United States currently? Just in the past couple of weeks, there was a shooting a block or so from my house (one dead, one wounded). Hypothesized rationale is that it was a drug related shooting. In the suburb next to the university, a man shot and killed five individuals at a city council meeting. Hypothesized rationale was that he recently lost a court case in a long standing dispute with the city council. The Lane Bryant shootings--hypothesized rationale is a robbery gone bad. The NIU shooting--hypothesized rationale is the medication theory. These are complex situations and one single variable rarely is the sole cause of a set of behaviors. In each case, other choices in the situation could have been made that would not have included shooting the victims. The common thread for each of these situations was the easy access each shooter apparently had to weapons. In the United States, we seem to do a poor job of monitoring who gets weapons, poorly prosecute those caught with illegal weapons, protect loopholes in gun laws to make weapons freely available without background checks at gun shows, etc., etc., etc. Now before someone else states the obvious, let me add that I recognize that "guns don't kill people; people kill people." To which I add, "guns just make it easier." To Peace, Linda Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2001). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. -- Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology and International Human Rights Past-President, Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, & Violence (Div. 48, APA) <http://www.peacepsych.org> Steering Committee, Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) <http://www.psysr.org> Secretary, Raphael Lemkin Award Committee, Institute for the Study of Genocide <http://www.isg-iags.org/> Coordinator - Holocaust & Genocide Studies Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Webster University 470 East Lockwood St. Louis, MO 63119 Main Webpage: http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's (and woman's) best friend. . . . Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
