Research designs

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Research designs

The research design refers to the overall strategy that a

researcher chooses to investigate the research problem and test
their hypothesis. The research design a psychologist chooses may
have an effect on the validity of the study. The two most commonly
used designs that we see in IB Psychology are the repeated
measures and independent samples design. However, it is
important for you to know that other research designs exist since
you will nd an example of other ways of doing research throughout
the course.

Repeated measures design

In a repeated measures design, you have one sample of
participants that receives each condition of an experiment. If we
were testing the effect of music on learning, the same participants

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 would memorize a list of words with music - and then again without
music.
It is not always that there are two or more conditions that are tested
distinctively. Sometimes researchers test the
conditions concurrently - that is, at the same time. For example, a
psychologist may give a list of words to a group of participants to
memorize. Some of the words are about childhood and the other
words are about adulthood. The psychologist wants to see if one
type of word is recalled at a higher frequency than another.
The strength of this design is that an individual is only compared to
him or herself. In other words, participant variables are
controlled. In the example of having to memorize a list of words
while listening to music, an individual's level of English will not make
a difference because she is only being compared to herself, not to
someone who speaks English more uently. Another advantage of
this design is that fewer participants are needed.
There are also limitations to this design. When participants are
asked to take part in more than one condition, they may
demonstrate what is called order effects. For example, boredom,
fatigue, or practice effect. Practice effect is when they get better at
something just because they keep doing it. If they are given a
memory test four or ve times, they may just get better because
they are developing strategies through practice.
Researchers can control for order effects by counter-balancing.
This means that one group of participants will start with condition A
and then takes part in condition B. The second group of participants
starts with condition B and then takes part in condition A. This
makes sure that it is not the order of the conditions that affects the
results of the study.
Another limitation is that participants may demonstrate demand
characteristics - that is, participants form an interpretation of the
experiment's purpose and subconsciously change their behavior to
t that interpretation. They may try to do what they think the
researcher wants them to do - a demand characteristic called the
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expectancy effect. Or they may try to disprove the hypothesis with
a demand characteristic called the screw-you effect.
In repeated measures designs it is often not possible to use the
same materials for both conditions. For example, you cannot use
the same list of words to memorize under two conditions. By using
two different lists of words, you now have introduced
a confounding variable - for example, the dif culty level of the
words may be different or some of the words may be more familiar
to an individual in one condition than the other. Confounding
variables - also called extraneous or third variables - lower the
internal validity of an experiment, making it less clear whether it was
actually the independent variable that in uenced the dependent
variable.

Independent samples design

In an independent samples design, members of the sample are
randomly allocated to one condition of the experiment. If we were
testing the effect of music on learning, the participants could be
randomly assigned to diagnosed participantsclassical music, rock
music, pop music, or no music condition.
The strength of this design is that order effects are controlled since
each participant only experiences one condition. In addition,
demand characteristics are less likely as the participants will most
likely not guess the hypothesis. Finally, the same materials can be
used for all conditions - for example, the same list of words could be
used for each of the groups as they listen to different types of
music. Therefore, we could draw a conclusion about the type of
music used since all participants were given the same list of words.
As with any design, there are limitations. Unlike the repeated
measures design, participant variability may in uence the results of
the study. - for example, one group may have more non-native
English speakers or better memorizers. Another dif culty of using
an independent samples design is that more participants are
required.
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As you can see, the strengths of one design mirror the limitations of
the other. Ideally, when researching a psychological question,
researchers would use both designs.
Matched pairs design
A matched pairs design is an independent samples design in which
participants are not randomly allocated to conditions. Instead, they
are usually pre-tested with regard to the variable. So, a memory test
may be given and then the weakest memorizers are randomly
allocated to one of the conditions, then the middle-performing
memorizers are allocated, and then the top-performing
memorizers. In this way, the researchers guarantee that each
condition has the full range of abilities. Random allocation may end
up with all of the poor memorizers in a single group. In this way, we
lessen the chance that participant variability will affect the results. It
could also be that they are "matched" based on a trait - for example,
years speaking English, whether they do regular exercise, or if they
are a smoker.