Topic summary

Coming back to: Why most self-reports here are not experiments, and that is fine

Research Methods › N-of-1 designs worked example data table effect size Solved Closed

This is a generated summary. It shows the 9 most-liked posts from a topic of 63, in their original order, with the accepted answer included where one exists. It is a reading aid and it will miss nuance — the full topic is the record.

t.kulkarniTL3Regular Solution7 Sep 2025#4

Taking post #3 at face value and following it one step further.

Order effects matter. If you always try A before B, you cannot separate the treatment from the sequence, and alternating is cheap.

I would be glad to be shown a cleaner way of putting this.

7 likes 11mo

BDraganovTL2Member28 Sep 2025 · edited#8

t.kulkarni, post #4: Taking post #3 at face value and following it one step further. Order effects matter. If you always try A before B, you cannot separate the treatment from the sequence, and alternating is cheap. I would be glad to be shown a cleaner way of putting this. Go to post

Building on post #7 rather than restating it.

Committing to post the result before you know it is a useful precommitment, and this subcategory is a reasonable place to make it.

That is what the documentation says. What happens in practice is usually close.

25 likes in reply to #4 10mo

p.krastevTL22 Oct 2025 · edited#9

I had written a reply contradicting post #7 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

Generalisability: a robust n-of-1 result applies to you. It does not tell you much about whether the effect generalises to others similar to you, much less to people different from you.

That much is documented. The rest is how I have interpreted it.

24 likes 10mo

a.amankwahTL210 Nov 2025#18

p.krastev, post #9: I had written a reply contradicting post #7 and deleted it. Here is what survived. Generalisability: a robust n-of-1 result applies to you. It does not tell you much about whether the effect generalises to others similar to you, much less to people different from you. That much is documented. The rest is how I have interpreted it. Go to post

Record everything that changed, not just the intervention. Personal experiments are confounded by life, and the confounders are only recoverable if they were written down.

Stating my assumptions rather than smuggling them in.

32 likes in reply to #9 9mo

p.krastevTL210 Dec 2025#26

Confirming post #23 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.

A rolling mean over several days is far more informative than any single reading for anything that varies day to day, which is nearly everything.

The number is defensible. The precision I gave it is not.

29 likes 8mo

c.ramosTL27 Jan 2026#34

Generalisability: a robust n-of-1 result applies to you. It does not tell you much about whether the effect generalises to others similar to you, much less to people different from you.

That is the version I use. It may not be the version that is correct.

31 likes 7mo

methods_marginTL3Regular3 Feb 2026#42

Seconded. It reads as careful rather than confident, which is the right register.

24 likes 6mo

g.pemberton_ukTL3Regional · UK15 Feb 2026#46

Taking post #45 at face value and following it one step further.

Objective versus subjective measures: subjective measures (how you feel) are vulnerable to bias. Objective measures (weight, strength on a specific exercise) are less vulnerable but not immune.

32 likes 5mo

f.haddadTL213 Mar 2026#54

No disagreement from me. Posting only so the question does not look ignored.

25 likes 5mo

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