Experimental Designs

Question 1

what are pre experimental designs?

Answer 1

Simplified approaches to studying phenomena that lack the rigor and control of true experimental designs. These designs involve making observations or measurements before and after a treatment or intervention, but they typically lack a control group or randomization

Question 2

Do pre- experimental designs randomize the sample or have a control group?

Answer 2

no

Question 3

what are examples of pre-experimental designs?

Answer 3

one-shot case study

static group comparison

one group pre-test post test

Question 4

what is a one shot case study?

Answer 4

Involves observing a single group after they’ve been exposed to a treatment or intervention. There’s no comparison group, making it challenging to draw conclusions about cause and effect.

Question 5

what is a static group comparison?

Answer 5

Involves comparing two groups, one that received a treatment and one that didn’t, after the treatment has occurred. However, the groups are not randomly assigned, making it susceptible to confounding variables

Question 6

what is one group pre test post test?

Answer 6

a single group of participants is measured both before and after exposure to a treatment or intervention.

Question 7

what are quasi experimental study designs?

Answer 7

study designs are research methods that resemble experiments but lack full experimental control. Instead of randomly assigning participants to groups, researchers use existing groups or conditions. These designs allow studying the effects of interventions or treatments in real-world settings.

Question 8

what are true experimental designs?

Answer 8

like scientific experiments you might remember from school but conducted with greater precision. They involve randomly assigning participants to different groups to compare the effects of different treatments or interventions. This random assignment helps ensure that any differences observed between groups are due to the treatment, not other factors.

Question 9

what are randomized control trials?

Question 10

what are types of true experimental designs?

Answer 10

RCT
pastiest only design
Solomon four group designs
factorial designs
counterbalance design

Question 11

what are RCTs?

Answer 11

like scientific experiments where participants are randomly assigned to different groups. One group receives the treatment or intervention being studied (the experimental group), while another group does not (the control group). By randomly assigning participants, researchers aim to minimize bias and ensure that any differences between groups are due to the treatment, not other factors.

Question 12

what are the benefits of RCTs?

Answer 12

Strongest evidence for a causal relationship between and exposure
and an outcome

The strongest evidence for the benefits or risks of an intervention
comes from assigning subjects by a random mechanism to two or
more treatments

Nothing improves the performance of an intervention so much as the
ABSENCE of a comparison group

Question 13

what questions are RCTs intended to answer?

Answer 13

questions about efficacy or effectiveness of an intervention

Question 14

what is the Hawthorne effect?

Answer 14

The Hawthorne effect in research is when people modify their behavior or performance simply because they know they’re being observed.

Question 15

where does the strongest evidence causality come from?

Answer 15

where subjects
are assigned at random to the interventions

Question 16

what is simple randomization?

Answer 16

Simple randomization in research is like drawing names out of a hat to decide who gets what. It’s a method used to assign participants to different groups in a study. Each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any group, just like each name has an equal chance of being drawn from the hat.

Question 17

what is stratified randomization?

Answer 17

Stratified randomization in research is like ensuring that everyone gets a fair chance at winning a prize, regardless of where they’re from. It’s a method used to assign participants to different groups in a study, but it takes into account certain characteristics or factors that researchers believe might influence the outcome.

Question 18

what is blocked randomization?

Answer 18

Blocked randomization in research is like organizing participants into smaller, more manageable groups before assigning them to different study groups.

Question 19

what is adaptive randomization?

Answer 19

Adaptive randomization in research is like adjusting the rules of a game as it’s being played to ensure fairness and balance. In this method, the assignment of participants to different study groups is not fixed from the start but adapts based on ongoing data collected during the study.

Question 20

what are some advantages to randomization?

Answer 20

decreases selection bias

no confounding bias

no information bias (as long as assessors are blind to group assignment)

probability of group assignment is known and equal for all

Question 21

what is a solution to not being able to blind the assessors and participants based on the nature of the intervention?

Answer 21

choose an outcome not affected by observer bias

Question 22

when should you calculate sample size of your study?

Answer 22

the planning phase to make sure you can recruit enough people to your study to detect a difference if it exists

Question 23

what is effect size?

Answer 23

Effect size in research is like the size of a footprint—it tells you how big of an impact an intervention has.

Question 24

what is a trivial effect size?

Answer 24

0.0- 0.2

Question 25

what is a small effect size?

Answer 25

0.2-0.5

Question 26

what is a moderate effect size?

Answer 26

0.5-0.8

Question 27

what is a strong effect size?

Answer 27

0.8 and above

Question 28

what effects occurring would cause a trial to be stopped?

Answer 28

unexpected harmful events

unexpectedly strong beneficial effects

futility in that no effect is likely ever to be observed

data quality issues that need to be corrected is the trial is to continue

Question 29

what are challenged in randomized control trials?

Answer 29

deceptively simple
theoretically straightforward
in reality they are operationally very complex

Question 30

where can the research question often be found?

Answer 30

the last paragraph of the introduction or abstract

Question 31

what is a consort diagram?

Answer 31

flow diagram displaying the progress of all participants through the trial

Question 32

what is a useful tool for detecting selection bias?

Answer 32

consort diagram

Question 33

what is a demographic table useful for?

Answer 33

looking for similarities between the groups at baseline

Question 34

what does the p value tell you?

Answer 34

if the results produce by the intervention are statistically significant when compared to the results produced by the
control group

Question 35

what’s the null value for RCT?

Answer 35

0

Question 36

what is counter balance design?

Answer 36

Counterbalance design in research is like switching the order of tasks or treatments to make sure everyone gets a fair chance. It’s a method used to control for the potential effects of order or sequence in experimental designs, especially when participants receive multiple treatments or complete multiple tasks.