Between-group design experiment

The between-group design is widely used in psychological, economic, and sociological experiments, as well as in several other fields in the natural or social sciences.

Additionally, this design saves a great deal of time, which is ideal if the results aid in a time-sensitive issue, such as healthcare.

The main disadvantage with between-group designs is that they can be complex and often require a large number of participants to generate any useful and reliable data.

The potential scale of these experiments can make between-group designs impractical due to limited resources, subjects and space.

Whilst it is easy to try to select subjects of the same age, gender and background, this may lead to generalization issues, as you cannot then extrapolate the results to include wider groups.

At the same time, the lack of homogeneity within a group due to individual variability may also produce unreliable results and obscure genuine patterns and trends.

After the patients were treated according to their assigned condition for some period of time, let’s say a month, they would be given a measure of depression again (post-test).

Another example tests 15 men and 15 women, and examines participants' tasting of ice cream flavors: A group of scientists are researching to find out what flavor of ice cream people enjoy the most out of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and mint chocolate chip.