Compare methods

	Visual Analysis of Single-Case Data	Celeration Line Analysis
Field	Social Work	Social Work
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2010	1972
Originator	Applied behavior analysis tradition; codified by Kratochwill et al. (What Works Clearinghouse)	Owen R. White & the precision-teaching tradition; codified for social work by Bloom, Fischer & Orme
Type	Structured graphical judgment of intervention effect in single-case time-series data	Trend-line procedure for projecting baseline trend into the intervention phase
Seminal source	Kratochwill, T. R., Hitchcock, J., Horner, R. H., Levin, J. R., Odom, S. L., Rindskopf, D. M., & Shadish, W. R. (2010). Single-Case Designs Technical Documentation. What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education.	Kazdin, A. E. (2011). Single-Case Research Designs: Methods for Clinical and Applied Settings (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780195341881
Aliases	Visual Inspection of Single-Case Data, Single-Case Visual Analysis, Graphical Analysis of Single-Subject Data, Visual Analysis of Time-Series Graphs	Celeration Line, Split-Middle Method, Trend Line Analysis (Single-Case), Celeration Approach
Related	4	4
Summary	Visual analysis is the primary method for judging whether an intervention produced an effect in single-case and single-system designs: the data are plotted as a time series across baseline and intervention phases and read systematically for changes in level, trend, variability, immediacy of effect, overlap between phases, and consistency across similar phases. Rooted in applied behavior analysis and codified by the What Works Clearinghouse single-case standards, it treats the graph itself as the evidence and reserves the label 'effect' for changes that are clear, replicated within the design, and unlikely to reflect ordinary fluctuation.	Celeration line analysis is a single-case method that fits a trend line to the baseline phase, projects that line forward into the intervention phase, and judges effect by how many intervention data points fall on the improvement side of the projected trend. Built on Owen White's split-middle technique from precision teaching and codified for social-work practice by Bloom, Fischer, and Orme, it directly addresses a weakness of level-only comparisons: it asks whether the client improved beyond the trajectory the baseline was already on, and pairs the count with a simple binomial test for statistical decision-making.