REPEATED MEASURES

DESIGN
Lecture by Dr. Tehreem Arshad
Key q.1

Independent measures design, also known as between-groups, is an experimental

design where different participants are used in each condition of the independent
variable. This means that each condition of the experiment includes a different
group of participants.
This should be done by random allocation, ensuring that each participant has an
equal chance of being assigned to one group.
Introduction
• In an independent groups design, a separate group serves as a
control for the group given the experimental treatment.
• In a repeated measures design, subjects serve as their own
controls because they participate in both the experimental and
control conditions.
• In repeated measures designs, participants can undergo
changes during the experiment as they are repeatedly tested.
• Participants may improve with practice, for example, because
they learn more about the task or because they become more
relaxed in the experimental situation.
• They also may get worse with practice—for example, because
of fatigue or reduced motivation. These temporary changes are
called practice effects.
• Individual differences among participants cannot be
eliminated in the random groups design, but they can be
balanced by using random assignment.
• Similarly, the practice effects that participants experience
due to repeated testing in the repeated measures designs
cannot be eliminated. Like individual differences in the
random groups design, however, practice effects can be
balanced, or averaged, across the conditions of a
repeated measures design experiment.
• When balanced across the conditions, practice effects are
not confounded with the independent variable and the
results of the experiment are interpretable.
WHY RESEARCHERS USE REPEATED
MEASURES DESIGNS
• Researchers choose to use a repeated measures design
in order to
(1) conduct an experiment when few participants are
available
(2) conduct the experiment more efficiently
(3) increase the sensitivity of the experiment
(4) study changes in participants’ behavior over time.
• First, repeated measures designs require fewer
participants than an independent groups design, so these
designs are ideal for situations in which only a small
number of participants is available.
• Researchers who do experiments with children, the
elderly, or special populations such as individuals with
brain injuries frequently have a small number of
participants available.
• Researchers choose to use repeated measures designs
even when sufficient numbers of participants are available
for an independent groups design.
• Another important advantage of repeated measures
designs is that they are generally more sensitive than an
independent groups design.
• The sensitivity of an experiment refers to the ability to
detect the effect of the independent variable even if the
effect is a small one.
• Ideally, participants in a study respond similarly to an
experimental manipulation. In practice, however, we know
that people don’t all respond the same way. This error
variation can be due to variations in the procedure each
time the experiment is conducted or to individual
differences among the participants.
•
• The increased sensitivity of repeated measures designs is
especially attractive to researchers who study
independent variables that have small (hard-to-see)
effects on behavior.
THE ROLE OF PRACTICE EFFECTS IN
REPEATED MEASURES DESIGNS
• Repeated measures designs cannot be confounded by
individual differences variables because the same
individuals participate in each condition (level) of the
independent variable.
• Participants’ performance in repeated measures designs
may change across conditions simply because of
repeated testing (not because of the independent
variable); these changes are called practice effects.
• Practice effects may threaten the internal validity of a
repeated measures experiment when the different
conditions of the independent variable are presented in
the same order to all participants.
Defining Practice Effects
• In a repeated measures design, the characteristics of the
participants cannot confound the independent variable
being manipulated in the experiment.
• The same participants are tested in all the conditions of a
repeated measures design, so it is impossible to end up
with brighter, healthier, or more motivated participants in
one condition than in another condition.
• Stated more formally, there can be no confounding by
individual differences variables in repeated measures
designs. The absence of the potential for confounding by
individual differences variables is a great advantage of the
repeated measures designs.
• In general, practice effects should be balanced across the
conditions in repeated measures designs so that practice
effects “average out” across conditions. The key to
conducting interpretable experiments using the repeated
measures designs is learning to use appropriate
techniques to balance practice effects.
• The two types of repeated measures designs are the
complete and the incomplete design.
• The specific techniques for balancing practice effects
differ for the two repeated measures designs, but the
general term used to refer to these balancing techniques
is counterbalancing.
• In the complete design, practice effects are balanced
for each participant by administering the conditions to
each participant several times, using different orders each
time. Each participant can thus be considered a
“complete” experiment.
• In the incomplete design, each condition is
administered to each participant only once. The order of
administering the conditions is varied across participants
rather than for each participant, as is the case in the
complete design. Practice effects in the incomplete design
average out when the results are combined for all
participants
Balancing Practice Effects in the
Complete Design
• Practice effects are balanced in complete designs within
each participant using block randomization or ABBA
counterbalancing.
• In block randomization, all of the conditions of the
experiment (a block) are randomly ordered each time they
are presented.
• In ABBA counterbalancing, a random sequence of all
conditions is presented, followed by the opposite of the
sequence.
• Participants were shown slides of photographs and were
asked to rate each slide on a 7-point scale indicating the
intensity of the expressed emotion. The slides were
presented individually for 10 seconds, and participants
were then given 35 seconds to make their rating. The
critical independent variable in the experiment was the
version of the photograph depicting one of the emotions
(left composite, original, or right composite). Each
participant rated 54 slides: 18 left composites, 18
originals, and 18 right composites. Participants’ ratings of
emotional intensity were consistently higher for the left
composite than for the right composite. Does this finding
match your judgment that the face in pane
• In general, the left hemisphere controls the right side of
the body and the right hemisphere controls the left side of
the body. Thus, the left composite reflects control by the
right hemisphere, and the right composite reflects control
by the left hemisphere. The higher ratings of emotional
intensity for the left composite photographs suggest that
the right hemisphere may be more heavily involved than
the left hemisphere in the production of emotional
expression.
Block Randomization
• Block randomization can also be used to order the
conditions for each participant in a complete design.
• In general, the number of blocks in a block randomized
schedule is equal to the number of times each condition is
administered, and the size of each block is equal to the
number of conditions in the experiment.
• The practice effects can reasonably be expected to
average out over the three experimental conditions.
Determining the average position of each of the three
conditions in the block-randomized sequence gives a
rough indication of the balancing of practice effects.
• Block randomization is effective in balancing practice
effects, but each condition must be repeated several
times before we can expect practice effects to average
out. We should not expect practice effects to be balanced
after two or three blocks—any more than we would expect
sample sizes of two or three in the random groups design
to result in comparable groups. Fortunately, a technique is
available to balance practice effects when it is not
possible to administer each condition often enough for the
averaging process of block randomization to work
effectively
• ABBA Counterbalancing In its simplest form, ABBA
counterbalancing can be used to balance practice effects in the
complete design with as few as two administrations of each
condition. ABBA counterbalancing involves presenting the
conditions in one sequence (i.e., A then B) followed by the
opposite .
• ABBA counterbalancing is appropriately used only when
practice effects are linear. If practice effects are linear, the
same amount of practice effects is added to or subtracted from
performance on each successive trial.
• ABBA counterbalancing balances practice effects even more
effectively with larger numbers of repetitions of the cycle.
Usually, however, ABBA counterbalancing is used when the
number of conditions and the number of repetitions of each
condition are relatively sm
• ABBA counterbalancing is also ineffective when
anticipation effects can occur. Anticipation effects occur
when a participant develops expectations about which
condition should occur next in the sequence. The
participant’s response to that condition may then be
influenced more by this expectation than by the actual
experience of the condition itself.
DATA ANALYSIS OF REPEATED
MEASURES DESIGNS
• Describing the Results
1. Data analysis for a complete design begins with
computing a summary score (e.g., mean, median) for
each participant.
2. Descriptive statistics are used to summarize
performance across all participants for each condition of
the independent variable.
After checking the data for errors and outliers, the fi rst step
in analyzing a repeated measures experiment is to
summarize participants’ performance in each condition of
the experiment.
• Confirming what the results reveal