Topic summary

Pre-registering a personal experiment, seriously

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

This is a generated summary. It shows the 9 most-liked posts from a topic of 120, 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.

p.amankwahTL224 May 2025#1

Pre-registering a personal experiment, seriously — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable.

A narrow question about pre-registering a personal experiment, deliberately narrow, because the broad version has been asked here four times and produced four long threads and no answer.

One question, stated units, stated method, and what I have already ruled out.

46 likes 14mo

j.lokkenTL225 May 2025#5

s.stavrianos, post #4: A single-person experiment can be genuinely informative if it has a pre-specified outcome, a defined period, and a plan written before the data arrives. Most accounts here have none of those. Not the whole picture, but the part of it I can speak to. Go to post

Agreed, and I will stop repeating the version of this I had been repeating.

33 likes in reply to #4 14mo

a.kowalskiTL226 May 2025#16

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.

I would be interested in a counterexample if anyone has one.

33 likes 14mo

s.okaforTL228 May 2025#28

dr_bhattacharya, post #25: I read post #23 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite. The most useful thing anyone has posted about pre-registering a personal experiment in this category was a table of what had been measured and by whom. That is what I would want again. Go to post

A single-person experiment can be genuinely informative if it has a pre-specified outcome, a defined period, and a plan written before the data arrives. Most accounts here have none of those.

I have deliberately not rounded that, because the rounding is where the argument starts.

26 likes in reply to #25 14mo

s.vanheckeTL228 May 2025#36

A methods point on pre-registering a personal experiment rather than a substantive one: if the comparison is not like for like, the difference you are measuring is the difference in method.

28 likes 14mo

l.vermeulenTL229 May 2025#48

I disagree with the framing of pre-registering a personal experiment above, and I think it is a substantive disagreement rather than a terminological one. Setting out why, so it can be checked.

The reasoning depends on an assumption that is doing a lot of work and is never stated. If the assumption holds, the conclusion follows. I do not think it holds generally.

29 likes 14mo

r.serranoTL230 May 2025#56

A single-person experiment can be genuinely informative if it has a pre-specified outcome, a defined period, and a plan written before the data arrives. Most accounts here have none of those.

Not a strong opinion, just a consistent one.

31 likes 14mo

i.rasmussenTL231 May 2025#63

Write down what you would accept as evidence that it did not work, before starting. That one sentence turns an anecdote into an experiment.

Small point, but it is the one that usually catches people.

29 likes 14mo

k.agyemanTL22 Jun 2025#95

Pre-registering a personal experiment: I would want to see the raw numbers rather than the summary before agreeing. Summaries lose exactly the information that would settle this.

32 likes 14mo

Read the full topic (120 posts)

This topic was referenced in

An ABAB design with a data table and honest limitations — a second datasetResearch Methods › N-of-1 designs · 118 replies
Second pass at: Designing a personal experiment that could change your mindResearch Methods › N-of-1 designs · 44 replies

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