Experiment
Definition
An experiment is a scientific study in which researchers manipulate one or more variables to observe the effect on another variable, while controlling for other factors.
Analogy
Think of an experiment as a cooking recipe. You have different ingredients (variables) that you can change and manipulate to see how they affect the final dish (outcome variable). By carefully controlling the cooking process and keeping everything else constant, you can determine which ingredients have the most impact on the taste of the dish.
Related terms
Experimental Units: These are the individuals or objects on which measurements are taken in an experiment. For example, if you're conducting a study on the effects of a new drug, experimental units could be patients who receive different dosages.
Treatment Groups: In an experiment, treatment groups are created by assigning experimental units to receive specific treatments or conditions. For instance, if you're testing a new fertilizer on plants, you might have one group receiving the new fertilizer and another group receiving no fertilizer as a control.
Control Group: This refers to a specific treatment group in an experiment where no treatment is applied. It serves as a baseline for comparison against other treatment groups. In our plant fertilizer example, it would be the group that receives no fertilizer at all.
"Experiment" appears in:
Subjects (2)
Study guides (1)
Additional resources (2)
Practice Questions (3)
- If we are performing an experiment to compare the weights of two populations, what is essential regarding the randomization of the samples?
- What are treatments considered in an experiment?
- To make sure that the results of an experiment remain unbiased, it is important to:
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