Dear Tutor, I am having some trouble understanding why it is so important to randomly assign participants to experimental conditions. It seems to me that if you have a large enough sample, the results would probably be valid even if you didn’t bother to randomize the participants. Why is it important to go through the trouble of randomizing participants? Also, if you are going to randomly assign participants, how should you do it?
Respond to this student’s email, being sure to explain the concepts at the appropriate level for an undergraduate. In your response, be sure that you explain why it is important to randomize participants. Also, explain some of the ways that a researcher can randomly assign participants. Last, be sure to explain how a researcher can make valid conclusions even in situations where randomization is not possible.
Your paper should include all of the following elements:
Guidelines for Submission: Your paper must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, and one-inch margins. This paper should be a minimum of three pages (not including cover page and references) and must follow APA format.
An explanation of the methods of randomization that a researcher can use to randomly assign participants
An explanation of how a researcher can draw conclusions without randomization
Answer preview
There are many methods used to randomize participants in clinical trials. However, the commonly used ones include block randomization, simple randomization, and stratified randomization. A researcher needs to pick an approach that generates valid outcomes from the survey. The Block random allocation is used to place participants into groups randomly without any order that is equal in size (Festing, 2020). This approach ensures that all participants are identical in all groups in all instances (McCall, 2019). The researcher determines the size of the blocks, and they must be multiple of the sum of groups. For instance, with two clinical trial groups, the block size should be 6 and 8. Scholars use this approach because it is easy to make results from the interpretations of the findings.
