ABSTRACT
Experimental design refers to the way in which an experiment is structured. It is rarely something that is made explicit to the novice researcher and consequently is often overlooked in the planning stage. By the time you have identified your research question (Chapter 2) and translated this into your research hypotheses (Chapter 1), you should begin considering how you are going to design your research project. This chapter will introduce issues such as validity and reliability and focus on some common research designs, with the aim of giving you the understanding required to design an experiment that is appropriate to your research question.
