Experimental Design

Question 1

What does it mean to take a scientifc approach?

Answer 1

-Addressing questions that can be answered with data from observation or measurement
- Uses reasoning to minimise bias

Question 2

What is an example of availability bias?

Answer 2

Influenced by things nearby or that happened recently

(shark attack - don’t go swimming)

Question 3

What is an example of causation bias?

Answer 3

Advertisement with attractive looking pearson wearing certain brand of trainers.

Question 4

What is an example of clustering illusion bias?

Answer 4

Seeing a pattern in random sequence of numbers/events

Question 5

What is an example of confirmation bias?

Answer 5

All uncommon weather events attributed to climate change

Question 6

What is an example of an appeal to emotion?

Answer 6

Playing on fear of needles to discourage from vaccination

Question 7

What are the different types of research?

Answer 7

• Exploratory
• Hypothesis driven
• Experimental
• Interventional
• Observational

Question 8

What does PICO(T/S) stand for?

Answer 8

P- population
I- intervention
C- comparison
O- outcome
T- timing
S-study design

Question 9

What is a scientific theory?

Answer 9

• A summary of a series of hypotheses
• Coherent group of ideas
• Supported by repeated testing using multiple methods
• Valid explanation of a phenomenon

Question 10

Why are models/modelling used?

Answer 10

• To simplify
• Make visible
• Represent
• Physiologial revelance
• Availability of genetic tools
• Cost
• Ethics
• Speed
• Expertise

Question 11

What is blinding?

Answer 11

• a strategy used in research where the people (e.g. researchers and technicians) who are involved in an experiment are kept unaware of the treatment or other intervention allocation the animals receive.
• Can reduce subjective bias and improve reliability.
• It’s not always possible!

Question 12

What is reliability?

Answer 12

• The extent to which experimental rreuslts can be repeated when the research is done again under the same conditions.
• Measurement error

Question 13

What is reproducibility?

Answer 13

• If someone else repeats the investigation and gets similar results
• Tested in a replication study

Question 14

What are ways of improving reproducibilty?

Answer 14

• Open data
• Pre-registration
• Collaboration
• Automation
• Open methods
• Post-publication review
• Reporting guidelines

Question 15

What is randomisation?

Answer 15

• use an appropriate method to allocate treatment to human, animal, test tube etc
• picking at “random” = not random
• Use a computer e.g graphpad prism or Excel RAND function