The adapted alternating treatments design is a commonly used experimental design in skill acquisition research. This design allows for the evaluation of two or more independent variables on responding to unique target sets. Equating target sets is necessary to ensure a valid comparison of the independent variables. To date, there is little guidance on best practice when equating target sets and it is unclear how researchers have done so previously. We reviewed the reported methods used to equate target sets in articles published using the adapted alternating treatments design in five behavior-analytic journals. Just over half of the studies published using the adapted alternating treatments design reported any method to equate target sets and the methods varied considerably. Alternative methods, such as random assignment, were prevalent. Considerations for best practice and avenues for future research are discussed.

中文翻译：

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回顾在适应性交替治疗设计中使目标集相等的方法。

适应性交替治疗设计是技能习得研究中常用的实验设计。这种设计允许在响应独特的目标集时评估两个或多个自变量。为确保自变量的有效比较，必须使目标集相等。迄今为止，在将目标集等同时几乎没有关于最佳实践的指导，并且不清楚研究人员以前是如何做到这一点的。我们回顾了在五种行为分析期刊中使用适应性交替治疗设计发表的文章中用于将目标集等同的报告方法。使用调整后的交替治疗设计发表的研究中，有超过一半报告了使目标集相等的任何方法，并且方法差异很大。替代方法，例如随机分配，很普遍。