Experimental Design

Question 1

What is independent groups/measures?

Answer 1

• Using different participants in each condition of the experiment

Question 2

What is an advantage of using independent groups/measures

Answer 2

Reduces demand characteristics
- Only doing 1 condition will reduce the chances of participants guessing the aims and showing demand characs

Question 3

What is a disadvantage and how do you deal with them?

Answer 3

Individual differences
- Lack of control over participant variables which may confound the results
- More intelligent individuals may all be in one group making it unfair for the other conditions

Match Participants
- Is a way of dealing with this disadvantage
- Involves matching the participants in both groups to make them similar in terms of participant variables

Question 4

What is Matched Pairs design?

Answer 4

• Involves matching the participants in both groups to make them similar in terms of participant variables like age, gender, intelligence etc.

Question 5

What is an advantage of Matched Pairs?

Answer 5

Reduced individual differences
- Matched pairs offers a similar pair of participants for both conditions

Question 6

What is a disadvantage of Matched Pairs and how do we deal with them?

Answer 6

Very Time consuming
- Very difficult and time consuming to find participants who match each other
- Makes it even more difficult to target population as it is particularly small

Random Allocation of Participants
- Parts should be randomly allocated to groups this will save researchers time but doesn’t match relevant variables

Question 7

What is Repeated Measures design?

Answer 7

• Using the same participants in the both conditions

Question 8

What is an advantage of using Repeated measures design

Answer 8

Fewer participants needed
- Only need the 1 group to do all conditions

Question 9

What is a disadvantage of Repeated Measures and how do we deal with them?

Answer 9

Demand characteristics
- Using the same participants can lead to them guessing the aims of the study and displaying either play you effect or screw you effect

Deception
- May have to deceive and lie to the participants to reduce the demand characteristics, this is known as single blind where the participant is blind to the aim of the study