Conducting Meaningful Experiments

Designing and conducting experiments involving human participants requires a skillset different from that needed for statistically analyzing the resulting data. The Design and Conduct of Meaningful Experiments Involving Human Participants combines an introduction to scientific culture and ethical mores with specific experimental design and procedural content. Author R. Barker Bausell assumes no statistical background on the part of the reader, resulting in a highly accessible text. Clear instructions are provided on topics ranging from the selection of a societally important outcome variable to potentially efficacious interventions to the conduct of the experiment itself. Early chapters introduce the concept of experimental design in an intuitive manner involving both hypothetical and real-life examples of how people make causal inferences. The fundamentals of formal experimentation, randomization, and the use of control groups are introduced in the same manner, followed by the presentation and explanation of common (and later, more advanced) designs. Replete with synopses of examples from the journal literature and supplemented by 25 experimental principles, this book is designed to serve as an interdisciplinary supplementary text for research-methods courses in the educational, psychological, behavioral, social, and health sciences. It also serves as an excellent primary text for methods seminar courses.

By emphasizing how to think about and strategize a research study, Bausell shows you the important steps of a scientific study - from the formulation of the problem to the write-up of the results.

There is no doubt that this book will be well received by those who are fortunate enough to come across it. This book will be of use to the growing number of people involved either as purchasers or providers of research. Don′t go to work without it! --Health Services Management Research Journal "I would recommend [this book] to a colleague as a useful companion text for students. I would say that this is an engaging discussion of experimental research for social, behavioral, and health science students. The writing style is fresh and entertaining, and draws the willing reader into thinking through the process of designing and conducting experimental research. It is not a ′cookbook′ or a compendium of facts. Rather, it is a pragmatic and thoughtful description intended to help students understand how to design meaningful experiments, and by understanding that, they will also understand how to interpret research they do not conduct themselves." --Katharyn A. May, School of Nursing, Vanderbilt University "This slim but packed volume is written for prospective researchers in the social and health sciences. The writing style is lively, encouraging, upbeat. R. Barker Bausell brings science down to earth without sacrificing respect for rigor and complexity. . . . Recommended for all institutions with undergraduate or graduate research requirements in the social and health sciences." --Choice Tired of research methods books that tell how to perform a research study without any mention of the why behind doing research? Aimed at communicating the excitement and responsibility of the research process, this remarkable volume enables you to evaluate beforehand whether a prospective research study has the potential to either improve the human condition, contribute to theory formation, or explain the etiology of a significant phenomenon rather than to produce just another "publishable" study. By emphasizing how to think about and strategize a research study, R. Barker Bausell shows you the important steps of a scientific study--from the formulation of the problem to the write-up of the results. Replete with illustrative examples drawn from the social, health, and behavioral sciences, this volume is a must for all serious researchers.

"This book is a must for learning about the experimental design–from forming a research question to interpreting the results this text covers it all." –Sarah El Sayed, University of Texas at Arlington Designing Experiments for the Social Sciences: How to Plan, Create, and Execute Research Using Experiments is a practical, applied text for courses in experimental design. The text assumes that students have just a basic knowledge of the scientific method, and no statistics background is required. With its focus on how to effectively design experiments, rather than how to analyze them, the book concentrates on the stage where researchers are making decisions about procedural aspects of the experiment before interventions and treatments are given. Renita Coleman walks readers step-by-step on how to plan and execute experiments from the beginning by discussing choosing and collecting a sample, creating the stimuli and questionnaire, doing a manipulation check or pre-test, analyzing the data, and understanding and interpreting the results. Guidelines for deciding which elements are best used in the creation of a particular kind of experiment are also given. This title offers rich pedagogy, ethical considerations, and examples pertinent to all social science disciplines.

Novel collection of essays addressing contemporary trends in political science, covering a broad array of methodological and substantive topics.

How to Design and Report Experiments is the perfect textbook and guide to the often bewildering world of experimental design and statistics. It provides a complete map of the entire process beginning with how to get ideas about research, how to refine your research question and the actual design of the experiment, leading on to statistical procedure and assistance with writing up of results. While many books look at the fundamentals of doing successful experiments and include good coverage of statistical techniques, this book very importantly considers the process in chronological order with specific attention given to effective design in the context of likely methods needed and expected results. Without full assessment of these aspects, the experience and results may not end up being as positive as one might have hoped. Ample coverage is then also provided of statistical data analysis, a hazardous journey in itself, and the reporting of findings, with numerous examples and helpful tips of common downfalls throughout. Combining light humour, empathy with solid practical guidance to ensure a positive experience overall, How to Design and Report Experiments will be essential reading for students in psychology and those in cognate disciplines with an experimental focus or content in research methods courses.

Experiments in Reduced Gravity: Sediment Settling on Mars is the first book to be published that reflects experiments conducted on Martian geomorphology in reduced gravity. This brief yet important book on sediment experiments assesses the theoretical and empirical foundation of the models used to analyze the increasing information we have on the past geography on Mars. The book also evaluates the need to develop new methods for analyzing new information by providing a conceptual outline and a case study on how experiments can be used to test current theoretical considerations. The conceptual approach to identifying the need for and role of experiments will be of interest to planetary scientists and geoscientists not necessarily involved with Mars, but those using experiments in their research who can apply the book’s concepts. Includes figures, diagrams, illustrations, and photographs to vividly explore experiments and outcomes in reduced gravity Provides an outline of planned experiments and questions related to Martian geomorphology Features results from the MarsSedEx 1 Experiment in 2012

This concise, self-contained and cohesive book focuses on commonly used and recently developed methods for designing and analyzing high-throughput screening (HTS) experiments from a statistically sound basis. Combining ideas from biology, computing and statistics, the author explains experimental designs and analytic methods that are amenable to rigorous analysis and interpretation of RNAi HTS experiments. The opening chapters are carefully presented to be accessible both to biologists with training only in basic statistics and to computational scientists and statisticians with basic biological knowledge. Biologists will see how new experiment designs and rudimentary data-handling strategies for RNAi HTS experiments can improve their results, whereas analysts will learn how to apply recently developed statistical methods to interpret HTS experiments.

As more and more companies enter the global business arena, it is critical that they acquire relevant information specific to their industry and the country that they wish to enter. This book explains how to perform accurate, timely, and appropriate research to make informed strategic decisions. The chapters of "International Business Research" follow the overall research process - defining the research problem, explanation of research methodologies, data analysis, report writing and dissemination. The book presents methodologies for most functional areas and can be used as a research tool for the broad international business field. It includes in-chapter learning objectives, exercises, summaries, boxed inserts, and a detailed glossary. In addition, a sample data disk is bound into each copy of the book.