A Technical Guide to the Basics of Experimental Designs for Analyzing Experimental Data in Occupational Research

• Muhammad Shabbir
• Muhammad Sarwar
• Robina Kausar

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the basic concepts of experimental designs that could be applied to the research projects and also to a general experimental setting. An experiment is a process or study that involves in the collection of data and the results of experiments are not known in advance. Usually, statistical experiments are conducted in situations in which researchers can manipulate the conditions of the experiment and be able to control the factors that are irrelevant to the research objectives. The experimental design refers to a plan for assigning experimental units to treatment conditions. Further, the statistical design of experiments is an efficient procedure for planning experiments so that the data obtained can be analyzed to yield valid and objective conclusions. In the design of experiments, the experimenter is often interested in the effect of some process or intervention (the treatment) on some objects (the experimental units), which may be peoples, parts of peoples, groups of peoples, plants, animals, etc. Design of experiments is thus a discipline that has very broad application across all the natural and social sciences, and engineering. In addition, in an experiment, it is deliberately changed one or more process variables or factors in order to observe the effect of the changes those have one or more response variables. Three of the more widely used experimental designs are the Completely randomized design, the Randomized block design, and the Factorial design. These different designs involving little or no additional experimental labor might increase the precision of experimental research many folds. This information can be helpful to develop expertise in experimental design and interpretation of experimental results which is a key component of scientific inquiry. Such activities give experience to scientists with experimental designs to further develop their understandings and skills in research so that they can be prepared to design more extensive experiments in subsequent research.

Select Volume / Issue:

• Volume 1,Issue 2, Nov. 2014

Year:

2014

Type of Publication:

Article

Keywords:

Experimental Design; Analyzing Data; Experimental Test; Statistic Procedure; Block Designs

Journal:

IJASM

Volume:

1

Number:

2

Pages:

46-51

Month:

November