Experimental Designs

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  • Experimental designs.
    • The way in which participation in an experiment is organised. participants can perform in only one or all of the levels of the IV
    • Repeated Measures
      • Each participant performs in every level of the IV
      • Strengths
        • individual differences are unlikely to distort the effect of the IV as participants do both evels
        • counterbalancing reduces order effects
        • blind procedures reduce demand characteristics
      • Weaknesses
        • order effects and extraneous variables may distort the results
        • participants see the experimental task more than once, increasing exposure to demand characteristics
    • independent groups
      • different groups of participants are used in each level of IV
      • Strengths
        • different participants are used in each level of the IV so no effects
        • participants only see the experimental tasks once, reducing exposure to demand characteristics
        • the effects of individual differences can be reduced by random allocation to levels of the IV
      • Weaknesses
        • individual differences may distort results if participants in one level of the IV differ  from those in another.
        • more participants are needed than with repeated measures (may be less ethical or hard to find)
    • matched pairs
      • participants are arranged into pairs that are similar in important ways for the study and one member of each pair performs in each level of the IV
      • strengths
        • no order effects
        • controls for individual differences e.g. identical twins are excellent for matched pairs
      • Weaknesses
        • the similarity between pairs is limited by the matching process, which might be flawed
        • matching participants is time consuming and difficult.

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