ABSTRACT
Study design and statistical analysis are research components of immense practical consequence. Careful attention to study design, at the very beginning of one’s thinking about a research project, will insure that questions and hypotheses are formulated that can be adequately addressed through data collection. It also insures that all potentially relevant measures are collected in such a way that their importance can be determined, and it insures that extraneous factors are excluded, so that they do not contaminate the data.
