What is the importance and need of a control group in a scientific study? The objective of the present article is to present, in a clear and objective manner, the importance of including a control group in scientific research. The control group consists of elements that present exactly the same characteristics of the experimental group, except for the variable applied to the latter. In a controlled experiment, two identical experiments are carried out: in one of them, the treatment or tested factor experimental group is applied; whereas in the other group control , the tested factor is not applied.
A good example for us, orthodontists, is the assessment of the influence of medicine over orthodontic tooth movement. In these cases, it is important to examine if the supposed effects of the applied drug are produced only by the drug.
In this situation, identical groups of patients or animals are compared, one of them receives the drug and the other receives a placebo or, in many cases, does not receive any drug control group. In order to avoid bias, it is always important to prevent not only the researchers, but also the individuals who will receive the medicine from knowing which group receives the real drug.
In Orthodontics, as in any specialty in the Health field, it is difficult to establish a control group for clinical studies, given that many ethical implications are involved.
A good example to demonstrate this situation is the proposal of a study focused on the assessment of a new method for skeletal Class II malocclusion treatment of patients in craniofacial growth. In an experimental study, participants are randomly assigned to either treatment or control, ensuring that confounding factors are also randomly assigned. This is ideal. A controlled experiment is one in which every parameter is held constant except for the experimental independent variable.
A variable that remains unchanged or held constant to prevent its effects on the outcome and therefore may verify the behavior of and the relationship between independent and dependent variables. Control variables are important in scientific experiments to test the validity of the results.
Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Psychology What is the importance of control group in scientific experiment? Ben Davis August 28, What is the importance of control group in scientific experiment?
Why are controls important in an experiment? What is the purpose of a control group in psychology? Why is it important to have a control group quizlet? What is the purpose of a control? What is the role of a control in an experiment quizlet?
Which definition best describes a control in an experiment? What is the control in an experiment simple definition? The researcher has used the same room, same test administration procedures, and the same test in both groups.
The only thing that differs is the amount of distraction created by noise levels and room temperature in the experimental group. After the experiment is complete, the researcher can then look at the test results and start making comparisons between the control group and the experimental group.
What he discovers is that the test scores on the math exam were significantly lower in the experimental group than they were in the control group. The results support his hypothesis that distractions such as excess noise and temperature can affect test scores. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter.
Pithon MM. Importance of the control group in scientific research. Dental Press J Orthod. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
I Accept Show Purposes. Studies can also include more than one treatment or control group. Researchers might want to examine the impact of multiple treatments at once, or compare a new treatment to several alternatives currently available. Since the only variable that differs between the three groups is the type of pill, any differences in average blood pressure between the three groups can be credited to the type of pill they received. Although control groups are more common in experimental research, they can be used in other types of research too.
Researchers generally rely on non-experimental control groups in two cases: quasi-experimental or matching design. While true experiments rely on random assignment to the treatment or control groups, quasi-experimental design uses some criterion other than randomization to assign people. Often, these assignments are not controlled by researchers, but are pre-existing groups that have received different treatments. For example, researchers could study the effects of a new teaching method that was applied in some classes in a school but not others, or study the impact of a new policy that is implemented in one state but not in the neighboring state.
In these cases, the classes that did not use the new teaching method, or the state that did not implement the new policy, is the control group. In correlational research , matching represents a potential alternate option when you cannot use either true or quasi-experimental designs. Each member of the treatment group thus has a counterpart in the control group identical in every way possible outside of the treatment. This ensures that the treatment is the only source of potential differences in outcomes between the two groups.
Instead, you can create a control group by matching individuals who do not smoke with those who do the treatment group on age, gender, diet, level of exercise, and so on, ensuring that the only difference between the two groups—and thus the only variable that could cause differences in their rates of lung cancer—is their use of e-cigarettes. What can proofreading do for your paper? Scribbr editors not only correct grammar and spelling mistakes, but also strengthen your writing by making sure your paper is free of vague language, redundant words and awkward phrasing.
See editing example. Control groups help ensure the internal validity of your research. You might see a difference over time in your dependent variable in your treatment group. However, without a control group, it is difficult to know whether the change has arisen from the treatment.
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