The N of 1 Markov Chain Design as a Means of Studying the Stages of Psychotherapy

Research on the process or, more specifically, the stages of psychotherapy has been difficult to carry out and can lead to spurious results. An initial step in furthering knowledge of the stages of successful therapy would be the use of an N of 1 design with Markov chain analyses. This design would allow one to incorporate the uniqueness of each therapy dyad, the interactional nature of the psychotherapeutic process, and a statistical test of the changes in the interactional behavior over time that is not often available in nonbehavioral single case designs. The purpose of this paper is to familiarize the reader with N of 1 designs and Markov chain methodologies and to propose how they could be combined in an attempt to study the stages of successful therapy. A hypothetical study is presented to exemplify the operation and value of the proposed N of 1 Markov chain design.