JEAB Research Over Time: Species Used, Experimental Designs, Statistical Analyses, and Sex of Subjects.
Report subject sex and use stats only to support, not supplant, visual analysis in single-case work.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team read every article in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior from 1958 through 2013.
They counted which animals were used, what design each study ran, whether stats were reported, and if the sex of each subject was listed.
In total they coded 3,634 experiments.
What they found
Pigeons starred in 60 % of all work. Within-subject designs ruled, showing up 90 % of the time.
Use of inferential statistics rose from almost zero in the 1960s to one in four papers by 2010.
Yet authors said whether subjects were male or female in only 40 % of studies.
How this fits with other research
Aydin (2024) looked at 465 newer single-case papers and found a fresh gap: one-third now have missing data points, but only 5 % tell you how they handled them.
Branch (1999) warned that p-values can distract behavior analysts; Lemons et al. (2015) show the warning went unheeded as significance tests keep spreading.
Baer et al. (1984) first counted Skinner citations in JEAB; J et al. widen the lens to the whole journal, proving the audit method still works decades later.
Why it matters
When you write up a single-case study, state each subject’s sex and think twice before adding a p-value. Visual analysis is still the gold standard; stats should help, not replace, your eye. Clear reports let future BCBAs replicate and extend your work.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We examined the species used as subjects in every article published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) from 1958 through 2013. We also determined the sex of subjects in every article with human subjects (N = 524) and in an equal number of randomly selected articles with nonhuman subjects, as well as the general type of experimental designs used. Finally, the percentage of articles reporting an inferential statistic was determined at 5-year intervals. In all, 35,317 subjects were studied in 3,084 articles; pigeons ranked first and humans second in number used. Within-subject experimental designs were more popular than between-subjects designs regardless of whether human or nonhuman subjects were studied but were used in a higher percentage of articles with nonhumans (75.4 %) than in articles with humans (68.2 %). The percentage of articles reporting an inferential statistic has increased over time, and more than half of the articles published in 2005 and 2010 reported one. Researchers who publish in JEAB frequently depart from Skinner's preferred research strategy, but it is not clear whether such departures are harmful. Finally, the sex of subjects was not reported in a sizable percentage of articles with both human and nonhuman subjects. This is an unfortunate oversight.
The Behavior analyst, 2015 · doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0548-3