The Design and Conduct of Meaningful Experiments Involving Human Participants

25 Scientific Principles

R. Barker Bausell

Provides the nuts and bolts, and dos and don'ts, of conducting research with human participants.
Written in an accessible style by a research-methods instructor who has designed and conducted many experiments in several different disciplines.
Covers every aspect of the experimental process except statistical analysis.
Truly interdisciplinary in nature, with examples from a wide variety of fields.

The Design and Conduct of Meaningful Experiments Involving Human Participants

25 Scientific Principles

R. Barker Bausell

Description

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.

The Design and Conduct of Meaningful Experiments Involving Human Participants

25 Scientific Principles

R. Barker Bausell

Introduction
Part I: Introduction to the Experimental Process
Chapter One: Conducting Meaningful Experiments: Prerequisites and Purposes
Chapter Two: Causal Inferences and the Strange (but Fictitious) Case of Mrs. Smith
Chapter Three: An Introduction to the Design of Meaningful Experiments via the Continuing Adventures of Dr. Jones
Chapter Four: Why Poorly Designed Experiments Are Inadequate for Making Complex Inferences: The Single Group Pretest/Post-test Design (or the Unfortunate Conclusion of Dr. Jones's Foray into the World of Science)
Part II: Experimental Designs for Research Involving Humans
Chapter Five: Enter the Control Group and a Deus ex Machina
Chapter Six: The Design of Single Factor, Between Subjects Experiments
Chapter Seven: Factorial Designs
Chapter Eight: Repeated Measures, within Subjects, and Longitudinal Designs
Part III: Maximizing and Implementing the Experimental Design
Chapter Nine: Ensuring Sufficient Statistical Power
Chapter Ten: Conducting the Experiment
Part IV: Other Experimental Issues, Designs, and Paradigms
Chapter Eleven: External Validity (Generalizability)
Chapter Twelve: Three Additional Experimental Paradigms: Single-Case, Program Evaluation/Natural Experiments, and Quality Improvement Research
Chapter Thirteen: Experimental Bias
Chapter Fourteen: Epilogue and Review

The Design and Conduct of Meaningful Experiments Involving Human Participants

25 Scientific Principles

R. Barker Bausell

Author Information

R. Barker Bausell, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland

R. Barker Bausell is Professor Emeritus, at the University of Maryland.

The Design and Conduct of Meaningful Experiments Involving Human Participants

25 Scientific Principles

R. Barker Bausell

Reviews and Awards

"This book is unique in content and presentation. It can be used as a textbook or as a supplemental textbook in research classes....Weighted Numerical Score: 99 - 5 Stars!" - Doody's Notes