Deck 12: A: Mixed Design: Which Therapy Is Best for Treating Eating Disorders

Question 1

Describe the purpose of a meta-analysis and provide one example of a meta-analysis.

Answer 1

A meta-analysis is a quantitative statistical analysis that compares and combines the results of individual but similar studies.An example of a meta-analysis would be a 10-year review of the literature and data on body mass index and determining the trends over the last 10 years.

Question 2

What is the experimenter-expectancy effect and how can it be mitigated?

Answer 2

The experimenter-expectancy effect refers to a bias that causes a researcher to unconsciously influence the participants of an experiment.Since the experimenter can have such a strong influence and control over the participant's perspective of the study,they can also influence the participant's actions by subtly or unconsciously allowing the participants to discern the true purpose of the study.One method to mitigate the experimenter-expectancy effect is to use a double-blind procedure.This would reduce the likelihood of any expectancies influencing the participant's behavior and would keep the administrators unaware of the different conditions.

Question 3

Compare and contrast between-subjects and within-subjects designs.

Answer 3

Between-subjects design randomly assigns participants only on one level of treatment;whereas,within-subjects designs randomly assign participants to a sequence of treatments and expose the participants to all levels of treatment.The main concern for between-subjects designs is with regard to power and for within-subjects designs it is internal and extern validity.The biggest strength for between-subjects designs is internal and external validity and for within-subjects design the biggest strength is power.

Question 4

Describe an A-B design and provide an example of such a design.

Question 5

What is a mixed design analysis of variance and what information is provided by running such an analysis?