Animal Testing Essay

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When you are starting to conduct a research experiment, there are many things done previously to ensure quality and accurate results. Without all the regulations and checks it would be very easy for someone to just come up with an idea and create an experiment and publish their findings. But thankfully, there are procedures set in place so that you must have many different groups and different variables to ensure the validity of the experiment. In research, sampling is best described as a particular “groups” that are involved with the experiments. There is a rule that there must be a control group in order for the experiment to have validity. First, you decide if you would need a find a sample or to use a census. You would find a population …show more content…

In research, it is favorable to have an unbiased sample. Unbiased means that the researchers took all the precautions necessary to make sure that they had a non-skewed group and no one was left unidentified, which if the participants of the sample were not identified, could lead to incorrect information and data collection. An example of a biased sample would be a therapist who conducts a study on his/her clients only. This would mean that the sample is biased against other clients who are seen by different therapists. In the book, Patten writes about simple random and systematic sampling (Patten). Simple random sampling basically means that every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for a sample. A method of obtaining a simple random sample would be to place names on sticks and put them in a mason jar. The researchers when then draw at random to determine who will be included in the study. Even though it is a random sample, there is still chance of error due to the fact that you cannot predict what type of people are in the sample. The might be some smarter than others, have a certain mental illness, or do not really want to participate in the study but are forced to do …show more content…

For each class, you had to do at least three to five different studies. Trying to squeeze that in with my already crammed schedule was not conducive for me, so I sometimes flew threw the surveys and hurried through the process. This may or may not have given the researchers incorrect data. Systematic sampling is defined as a system to select people out of a sample, such as every third person is chosen, every other person is chosen, or maybe the first letter of their last name. This could cause many problems depending on what type of people were in the group and what nationality due to certain cultures have emphasis on certain letters for last names or how the group is arranged. In order to avoid this, we could arrange a stratified random sample. This means that we would divide the population into respective categories such as all male or all female and then take same amount of participants from each group. There are other methods of sampling as well such as cluster sampling, purposive sampling, and snowball sampling. Sample size is also important to conducting research. To my understanding, it seems to be better to have a larger sample size so that your results are more precise because results will not vary much

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