Topic summary

Pre-registering a personal experiment, seriously — a second dataset

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

This is a generated summary. It shows the 9 most-liked posts from a topic of 67, 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.

logbook_erinTL3Regular1 Dec 2025#7

p.ostergaard, post #6: Coming back to post #2, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer. A definition problem is doing most of the work in this Pre-registering a personal experiment discussion. Once the term is pinned down I suspect the disagreement mostly goes away and what is left is small. 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 seen it go both ways, which is why I hedge.

25 likes in reply to #6 8mo

k.asanteTL212 Dec 2025#10

Nothing in a personal experiment is medical advice to anyone including yourself, and several people here have found that a prescriber will happily discuss a well-documented one.

24 likes 8mo

i.lehtinenTL27 Jan 2026#18

Reading back through the Pre-registering a personal experiment threads from last year, the same three questions come up every time and only one of them has ever been answered properly. That seems like a documentation gap rather than a knowledge gap.

31 likes 7mo

r.szaboTL216 Jan 2026 · edited#21

Pre-registering a personal experiment is a good example of a question where the honest answer is boring and the interesting answers are unsupported. I would go with boring.

31 likes 6mo

a.iyerTL227 Jan 2026#25

Sample size in n-of-1: you are the sample. Repeated measurements (weekly weighings, daily mood scores) increase the power to detect a real effect even though n=1.

Not the answer, but possibly the question that gets there.

23 likes 6mo

r.chukwuTL223 Feb 2026#35

On Pre-registering a personal experiment, the part that usually goes wrong is that the question is asked as though it has one answer. It has a range, and the width of the range is the interesting bit.

If you can post the two or three numbers you are working from, several people here will check the arithmetic rather than argue about the conclusion.

29 likes 5mo

electrolyte_notesTL2Regular3 Apr 2026#51

On post #50 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.

Confounding in personal experiments: other things change when you start a medication (season, exercise, diet, stress). Documenting those confounders helps you understand their contribution to the result.

A partial answer, offered because a partial answer beats none.

24 likes 4mo

q.zhao_qaTL3Quality assurance13 Apr 2026#55

Regression to the mean explains a great many personal experiments. People start when things are at their worst, and things at their worst tend to improve.

32 likes 3mo

dr_seongTL3Physician8 May 2026 · edited#66

A photograph or a device reading is a harder record than a recollection, and where one is available it should be the record.

29 likes 3mo

Read the full topic (67 posts)

This topic was referenced in

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