Counterbalancing

Counterbalancing is an element of research design that involves varying the order in which the conditions are administered for different sets of participants. It is commonly used in the context of within-subjects research (or repeated-measures) designs, in which the same group of participants experiences multiple conditions. Choosing to counterbalance the order that the conditions are administered addresses a major limitation of within-subjects research designs, namely, threats to internal validity from order (or carryover) effects. Order effects, which include fatigue effect and practice effect, result from the fact that every participant in a within-subjects study experiences all the conditions; as such, the order in which the conditions are administered can introduce a confounding variable in the study. As a result, conclusions from the study may ...

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