Single Factor Experimental

Design
 Experimental design

• “The best method — indeed the only fully compelling method — of

establishing causation is to conduct a carefully designed experiment in
which the effects of possible lurking (hidden) variables are controlled. To
experiment means to actively change x and to observe the response in y”
• Moore, D., & McCabe, D. (1993)
 Experimental design…

• Cause-and-effect relationship
• Manipulation of independent
variable(s)
• Influence on other variable(s)
(dependent variable(s)).
• Controlling other relevant variables.
• Measuring effects by some
statistical means.
• Specified objectives
Experimental design…

ic p r in c ip l e s:
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 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Experimental design

• Replicates are multiple experimental runs with the same

factor settings (levels).
• Difference between replicates and repeats
• Repeat and replicate measurements are both multiple
response measurements taken at the same combination of
factor settings; but repeat measurements are taken during
the same experimental run or consecutive runs, while
replicate measurements are taken during identical but
different experimental runs, which are often randomized.
Steps of Experimental design
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
introduction

• A study design with only one

independent factor or variable
of treatment in which the factor
is manipulated at multiple levels
is known as single factor
designs.
• All other factors are held
constant.
• Used commonly for more simple
research questions.
• Used to compare the relative
effectiveness of two or more
treatments on a common
criterion.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Introduction…

• Simplest experimental design with

single factor is one in which
independent variable has only two
levels.
• Single factor experimental designs
with more than two levels are called
single factor multilevel design and are
used when factor or independent
variable has more than two levels.
• It can detect nonlinear effects when
the IV is continuous.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Categories

• Independent groups design:

• Equivalent groups created by
randomization for testing different
experimental conditions.
• Two sample t-test for analysis purposes.
• Example:
• Sleep deprivation effects reaction time.
Making two or more groups of participants
choosing on the basis of randomization.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Categories
• Independent groups design: Strengths:
1. Control on individual differences through randomization.
2. No order effect (practice or fatigue effects) as the participants are
exposed to only one condition.
3. Use of more participants increasing external validity.
4. Less time consuming as all conditions can be tested at same time.
• Weaknesses:
1. Difficult to gather more participants so more time consuming.
2. Participants variables may affect results.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Categories

• Repeated measures design:

• Same group of participants are used between the
different experimental conditions.
• Paired t-test for analysis purpose.
• Example:
• Testing whether pictures and words help in recall vs. only
words alone. With a group of 20 participants, testing them
in first condition which is pictures and words and then you
use same group members to test them in second condition
which is words alone (different set of words but of similar
difficulty/syllables etc.).
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Categories

• Repeated measures design:

Strengths:
1. Requirement of less group
• members.
2. Quicker than gathering
participants between conditions.
3. No risk of individual differences.
• Weaknesses:
1. Order, practice, boredom & fatigue effects
2. Demand Characteristics if the experiment results in guessing what
the purpose of the study is.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Categories
• Matched groups design:
• Participants are matched on basis of some variable measure or
similar characteristics or traits such as age, gender, IQ, nationality
and, then, they are categorized in different groups.
• For trying and controlling possible individual
• differences and stop them affecting results.
• Paired t-test for analysis purpose.
• Example:
• Two groups both being tested on memory recall. Participants have
been matched as closely to one another as possible based on
relevant traits such as age, gender, similar background etc.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Categories

• Matched groups design:

• Strength:
1. Control for individual differences.
2. Useful when a repeated measures design may not
• work due to an order effect.
• Weaknesses:
1. Time consuming trying to find closely matched pairs.
2. Impossible to match individuals completely.
3. Sample may be smaller as trying to find a large sample of people
matching across similar traits may be difficult. So, findings may lack
external validity.
• Control group design:
• Two comparison groups are made
one of which is control group and
other is experimental group which
makes comparison easy.
• Random selection & assignment
• Control group may have no
treatment or a neutral treatment
(e.g. Placebo).
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Categorizing Further

• Single-factor experiments are categorized under two distinct

experimental designs.
Completely Randomized
Design (CRD)
• Complete block design
Randomized Complete Block
• (based on small number
Design (RCBD)
• of treatments)
Latin Square Design (LSD)
• Incomplete block designs
• (with large number of treatments) Balanced Incomplete
Block Design (BIBD)

Partially Balanced Incomplete Block Design (PBIBD)

 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Consists of a small number

of treatments.
• Characterized by blocks,
each of which contains at
least one complete set of
treatments.
• Intent of blocking is to
prevent large differences in
experimental units from
making differences between
treatment factor levels &
controlling variations.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Completely Randomized Design (CRD):

• Most basic design
• Treatments are allotted to the experimental units entirely at random
or by chance.
• Every treatment is used and replicated same number of times in every
block.
• Example
• If a treatment is to be applied to eight units, each unit has the same
chance or probability of receiving the treatment and, consequently,
there exists no systematic source of error.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Completely Randomized Design

(CRD):
• In a CRD, the units are taken
as a single group. So, units
forming a group should be
homogenous.
• This characteristic of design
suggests that it should be used
in a condition where
environmental effects are
easily controlled e.g.
laboratory conditions.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Completely Randomized Design (CRD): Steps involved:

• Randomization:
1. Step 1: Total number of experimental units (product of no. of
treatments and replications) are measured.
2. Step 2: Each experimental unit is assigned a number.
3. Step 3: Treatment assignment to each unit through:

Random digit technique: Drawing lots:

Use of table of random numbers Numbers of treatments written on
paper
SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Layout for
Randomization
steps
SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
A completely randomized layout
for four treatments and five
replications
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Completely Randomized Design (CRD): Steps involved:

• ANOVA: (one way)
1. 2 sources of variations: Experimental error:
Variability within sample

Treatment Variation:
Variability between sample results
Significant value of F indicates
some difference between the
treatments without showing the
direction of difference.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Completely Randomized Design (CRD):

• Advantages:
1. Simple design
2. Involves fewer assumptions than other more complicated designs.
3. Simple computations.
4. Statistical analysis is generally easy to perform.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Completely Randomized Design

(CRD):
• Disadvantages:
1. Lack of accuracy in results in
case of large number of
experimental units.
2. Large error variance as
randomization is not
restricted in any way to
ensure that the units that
receive one treatment are
similar to those receiving
other treatment.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD):

• Each treatment is used once in every block containing same number
of experimental units.
• Each group constitutes a single trial or replication.
• Variation associated with an extraneous factor is isolated by means
of a blocking technique.
• Blocks are formed from experimental units that are homogenous.
• Homogeneity within each block is achieved through matching units
to each block.
• Example: Categorizing students in two groups of boys and girls and
then dividing them in 2 groups each for two treatments making 4
groups (2 groups of boys and 2 groups of girls).
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Randomized Complete Block

Design (RCBD):
• Differences among treatment
level means will reflect not
only variations that are
attributable to different
treatments but also the
variation that can be directly
linked to individual
differences.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Randomized Complete Block Design

(RCBD): Steps involved:
1. Blocking technique:
• Principle objective is to reduce
experimental error.
• Accomplished by accounting for a
known source of variation among
experimental units.
• For effective blocking, source of
variability must be identified.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD): Steps involved:

• 2. Randomization:
• Numbering treatments and units in each block.
• Random allotment of treatments to units which reduces error
variance as a portion of variation is attributed to block differences.
• 3. ANOVA
• Two-way ANOVA Variance due to treatment
• Three sources of variation
Variance due to block
(Replication)

Error Variance
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD):

• Randomized layout with three blocks and four treatments
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD):

• Advantages:
1. Accuracy of results in comparison to CRDs due to further
partitioning of the experimental units by blocking as it
reduces the experimental error because of smaller error
variance due to homogeneous blocks.
2. Generally more precise than CRDs.
3. Statistical analysis applied on this design is not difficult or
complicated.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD):

• Disadvantages:
1. Cant give good results when number of treatments is too large.
2. If there is a large variation between experimental units within
blocks, a large error term may result.
3. If gap in data is numerous, a RCBD can be
• less efficient than CRD.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD):

• Single grouping of units into blocks is effective in reducing
experimental error which is major improvement over CRDs.
• Latin Square design extends this further by allowing removal of two
sources of variation from experimental error.
• Design enables an experimenter to isolate two known sources of
variation among experimental units.
• Levels of one source of variation are assigned to rows, and levels of
second source of variation are assigned to columns of a Latin
square.
• In Latin Square Design, every treatment occurs only once in each
row and each column.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD):

• Experimental units should be
arranged as two independent (row
and column) blocks such that
differences among row blocks and
column blocks reflect major sources
of variation.
• Number of replicates should be equal
to number of treatments.
• Treatment levels are randomly
assigned to cells of square provided
that each treatment level must
appear in each column and row too.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD):

• There is a single factor of primary interest, treatment factor, and
several nuisance factors.
• A nuisance factor is a factor that has some effect on the response,
but is of no interest to the experimenter; however, the variability it
transmits to the response needs to be minimized or explained.
• For Latin square designs, the 2 nuisance factors are divided into a
tabular grid with the property that each row and each column
receive each treatment exactly once.
Suppose that we want to test five drugs
A,B,C,D,E for their effect in alleviating
symptoms of a chronic disease. Five patients
are available for a trial, and each will be Week
available for five weeks. Testing a single drug
requires a week. Thus an experimental unit is

Patients
a ‘patient-week’. Structure of experimental
units is a rectangular grid (which happens to
be square in this case); there is no structure on
set of treatments. We can use Latin square to
allocate treatments. If rows of square
represent patients and columns are weeks,
then for example second patient, in the third
week of trial, will be given drug D. Now each
patient receives all five drugs, and in each
week all five drugs are tested.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD): Steps involved:

• Randomization:
• Process of randomization in LSD requires that a square be selected
at random from a number of Latin squares of a given order.
• A ready-made square is randomly selected and rows and columns
are reordered using table of random numbers and selecting three
digit numbers from table.
• Columns and rows are reordered using same steps of using ranks.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD): Steps involved:

• Randomization
• Final randomized layout
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD): Steps involved:

• ANOVA:
1. Further partitioning of sources of variation.
2. Introduces two more sources of variation than CRD and one more
source of variation than RCBD.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD): Advantages:

1. Requirement of fewer subjects as number of replications must be
equal to number of treatments.
2. Removing systematic treatment biases through counter-balancing
3. Removal of error-variance through two-way blocking.
4. They handle the case when we have several nuisance factors and
we either cannot combine them into a single factor or we wish to
keep them separate.
5. They allow experiments with a relatively small number of runs.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Latin Square Design (LSD): Disadvantages:

1. Large number of treatments will require large number of
replications.
2. The Latin square model assumes that there are no interactions
between the blocking variables or between the treatment variable
and the blocking variable. If there exists any interaction, this
design can’t be used.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Complete Block Design

• Schematic
partitioning of
total sum of
squares for
three designs
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Incomplete Block Design

• Block size increases with number of treatments in complete block

designs which contributes to variability within blocks, loss of
homogeneity, increased experimental error & less precision. On the
other hand, the larger the number of replications of treatment
effect, the more is the precision.
• For handling this issue, incomplete block designs were introduced
by Yates (1936).
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Incomplete Block Design

• Contain a large number of treatments and are also characterized by

blocks.
• Each block contains only a fraction of the number of treatments.
• Large number of treatments with smaller number of blocks.
• Blocks need not be of same size and each treatment need not
appear same number of times.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Incomplete Block Design

• Designs in which the block phenomenon is followed but the

condition of having all the treatments in all blocks is not met are
called incomplete block designs.
• Use of several small blocks with fewer treatments results in gains in
precision but at expense of a loss of information on comparisons
within blocks.
• Analysis of data for incomplete block design is more complex than
RCB and LS.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Incomplete Block Design

• Advantages:
• Used with large number of treatment factors when resources are
limited which don’t permit large replications.
• Used when there is variability within larger blocks.
• Used to increase precision.
• Disadvantages:
• There is unequal precision for certain comparisons of treatment
means.
• Randomization, layout, and analysis get more complicated.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Suitability in research

• Single factor experimental designs are often used in experimental

designs to determine effect of a certain treatment or intervention.
• Completely randomized design offers an equal chance of receiving a
treatment by each experimental unit. So, it is appropriate only for
experiments with homogeneous experimental units.
• They are used for simple experiments and for later stages of
experimentation (Meilgaard et al. 1991).
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Pakistani Researches

• One study with the topic “didactic therapy for management of

stress and co-morbid symptoms of depression and anxiety in
Pakistani adolescents”, by Huma Zafar (2014), adopted a pretest-
posttest control group experimental design in which they provided
didactic therapy to the experimental group in comparison to the
control group.
• Another study with the title “a comparison between the
psychosocial characteristics of drug addicts and non addicts”, by
Muhammad Tahir Khalily (2001), adopted a matched group design
for matching the addicts and non addicts on the related variables
for getting a good comparison.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Pakistani Researches

• A study with the topic “a comparison of personality characteristics

and family functioning of suicidal inpatients with normal persons”,
by Talebi et al. (2004), used independent groups design for finding
out any differences among the two groups.
• Another study named “counseling based on interacting cognitive
subsystems and its effect on anxiety of infertile couple”, by Ahmadi
et al. (2006), used control group experimental design for
comprehendible comparisons.
 SINGLE FACTOR EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Pakistani Researches

• An experiment conducted at Pakistan Agricultural Research Council

(PARC) Mardan, to overview "Comparative study of onion cultivars
at Mardan" with one factor Randomized Complete Block Design
having three replications (Sajid et al., 2012)
• Another experiment conducted in a 4x4 Latin Square design to
study the effect of feeding different levels of tallow on nutrient
intake, digestibility, rumen fermentation and blood metabolites
(Yaqoob et al., 2009).