Volume 4 Issue 4 April 2012

Researchers Corner

Confounding Relations in Experimental Research

Recently a group of researchers were discussing, on ResearchGate, an issue relating to incentives to participants of control group to circumvent the high attrition rate in an experimental design involving evaluation of a programme over 10 months. The experimental group had almost zero attrition rate and it is the control group subjects who were lost during the study phase. The question raised was whether researcher can offer some financial incentives to participants of the control group to retain them for 10 long months in the study to fill out the assessment schedules. The issues rose in the discussion included that the type of people who agree to participate in the control group may cause selection bias and such incentive can become a confounding factor (or confounder or lurking variable) and affect the outcome of the study. Interestingly, there is also a likelihood of a self selection bias through attrition if no incentives are offered (with those who participate for somewhat altruistic reasons).

For the benefit of novice researchers, experimental design is the basic design of logical proof for testing hypothesis. Being larger, costlier and decisive design, precise observation and personalised measurement of concepts/ terms are the hallmarks of experimental design. It leads to inference on causality, and employs a set of control and experimental groups of units to administer treatments/stimuli. The controlled observation of change and development in variables are measured in experimental study. Three basic principles of experimental design are replication, randomization and local control. Adequate control is the essence to reduce bias and increase reliability. Depending on the degree of control, experiments themselves could be: Trial & error experiment Controlled observation studies Natural or uncontrolled experiment Ex-post-facto technique (design) Laboratory experiment Field experiment

Unlike Experimental Hypothesis Testing, dependent variable is not manipulated in NonExperimental Hypothesis Testing. Some basic concepts required to understand the above confounded relation, if not already known, are: A concept that take on different quantitative or

numerical values (not qualitative or categorical non-quantifiable attributes, see types of data in March 2011 issue) is a Variable. A Dependent Variable is one that depends upon or a consequence of other variable. An Independent Variable is the antecedent to dependent variable. Extraneous Variable: Independent variable not related to the purpose but may affect the dependent variable and its effect on dependent variable is Experimental error Confounded Relationship: A relationship between dependent variable and independent

variable which is not free from the influence of extraneous variable Control is to minimise the effects of extraneous independent variable Experimental Group is the group exposed to some novel or special

condition/stimuli/treatments Control Group is the group exposed to usual conditions Treatments (Stimuli) refers to different conditions under which experimental and control groups are put/subjected to Experimental Units: Pre-determined subjects/plots/blocks on which different treatments are applied

A confounder can arise out of (i) the choice of measurement instrument (operational confound) because of a measure designed to assess a particular construct inadvertently measures something else as well and it can occur in non-experimental research design also or (ii) situational characteristics (procedural confound) in a laboratory or a quasi-experiment where researcher mistakenly allows another variable to change along with the manipulated independent variable or (iii) Inter-individual differences (person confound) i.e., essentially the difference between subjects studied.

An example at this stage may be more appropriate. The classic example from health sciences is that the relationship between hypertension and diabetes is confounded by obesity. That is the possibility of a third variable obesity causing both hypertension and diabetes. The selection (and other) biases discussed above are really artifacts. Apart from confounder and artifacts, there could also be a mediation or intermediary variable not considered by the researcher. The differences among these three are so transparent and difficult to delineate statistically.

Having detected confounder what can be done in experimental design? Of course, there are ways to modify the design to actively exclude or control confounding variables like financial incentive in the case discussed above. The spurious relationship between dependent and independent variables leading to confounder has to be controlled through experimental design (randomization, restriction and matching) or statistical means in the analysis (stratification,

multivariate analysis and matching) to avoid a false positive (Type I) error and achieve validity of inferences made about cause and effect so that observed phenomenon is attributable to the independent variable and not to the confounder.

Lastly, one interesting comment by a participant in ResearchGate is worth quoting here. Research is not right or wrong, be honest and mention all the steps with limitations. At the least it helps you learn and explore new things in research.

Relational (and correlational) research as such include association between attributes, correlation between variables with or without considering cause and effect relations and we shall discuss them in the coming issues.

M S Sridhar
sridhar@informindia.co.in