QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN In quantitative research your aim is to determine the relationship between one thing (an independent

variable) and another (a dependent or outcome variable) in a population. Quantitative research designs are either descriptive (subjects usually measured once) or experimental (subjects measured before and after a treatment). A descriptive study establishes only associations between variables. An experiment establishes causality. For an accurate estimate of the relationship between variables, a descriptive study usually needs a sample of hundreds or even thousands of subjects; an experiment, especially a crossover, may need only tens of subjects. The estimate of the relationship is less likely to be biased if you have a high participation rate in a sample selected randomly from a population. In experiments, bias is also less likely if subjects are randomly assigned to treatments, and if subjects and researchers are blind to the identity of the treatments. In all studies, subject characteristics can affect the relationship you are investigating. Limit their effect either by using a less heterogeneous sample of subjects or preferably by measuring the characteristics and including them in the analysis. In an experiment, try to measure variables that might explain the mechanism of the treatment. In an unblended experiment, such variables can help define the magnitude of any placebo effect. Quantitative research is all about quantifying relationships between variables. Variables are things like weight, performance, time, and treatment. You measure variables on a sample of subjects, which can be tissues, cells, animals, or humans. You express the relationship between variable using effect statistics, such as correlations, relative frequencies, or differences between means. I deal with these statistics and other aspects of analysis elsewhere at this site. In this article I focus on the design of quantitative research. First I describe the types of study you can use. Next I discuss how the nature of the sample affects your ability to make statements about the relationship in the population. I then deal with various ways to work out the size of the sample. Finally I give advice about the kinds of variable you need to measure.

The aim of quantitative research is to determine how one thing (a variable) affects another in a population. Quantitative research designs are either descriptive (subjects measured once) or experimental (subjects measured before and after a treatment). A descriptive study establishes only associations between variables. An experiment establishes causality. A descriptive study usually needs a sample of hundreds or even thousands of subjects for an accurate estimate of the relationship between variables. An experiment, especially a crossover, may need only tens of subjects. The estimate of the relationship is less likely to be biased if you have a high participation rate in a sample selected randomly from a population. In experiments, bias is also less likely if

subjects are randomly assigned to treatments, and if subjects and researchers are blind to the identity of the treatments. In all studies, measure everything that could account for variation in the outcome variable. In an experiment, try to measure variables that might explain the mechanism of the treatment. In an unblended experiment, such variables can help define the magnitude of any placebo effect.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

Quantitative research is all about quantifying the relationships between variables. Variables are the things you measure on your subjects, which can be humans, animals, or cells. Variables can represent subject characteristics (e.g. weight, height, sex), the things you are really interested in (e.g. athletic performance, rate or injury, physiological, psychological or sociological variables), and variables representing the timing of measurements and nature of any treatments subjects receive (e.g. before and after a real drug or a sham drug). To quantify the relationships between these variables, we use values of effect statistics such as the correlation coefficient, the difference between means of something in two groups, or the relative frequency of something in two groups.
TYPES OF DESIGN

Research studies aimed at quantifying relationships are of two kinds: descriptive and experimental. In a descriptive study, no attempt is made to change behavior or conditions--you measure things as they are. In an experimental study you take measurements, try some sort of intervention, then take measurements again to see what happened.
Types of Research Design Descriptive or observational case case series cross-sectional cohort or prospective or longitudinal case-control or retrospective

Experimental or longitudinal or repeated-measures without a control group time series crossover with a control group

Descriptive Studies

Descriptive studies are also called observational, because you observe the subjects without otherwise intervening. The simplest descriptive study is a case, which reports data on only one subject; examples are studies of an outstanding athlete or of an athlete with an unusual injury. Descriptive studies of a few cases are called case series. In cross-sectional studies variables of

interest in a sample of subjects are assayed once and analyzed. In prospective or cohort studies, some variables are assayed at the start of a study (e.g. dietary habits), then after a period of time the outcomes are determined (e.g. incidence of heart disease). Another label for this kind of study is longitudinal, although this term also applies to experiments. Case-control studies compare cases (subjects with a particular attribute, such as an injury or ability) with controls (subjects without the attribute); comparison is made of the exposure to something suspected of causing the cases, for example volume of high intensity training, or number of cigarettes smoked per day. Case-control studies are also called retrospective, because they focus on conditions in the past that might cause subjects to become cases rather than controls. A common case-control design in the exercise science literature is a comparison of the behavioral, psychological or anthropometric characteristics of elite and sub-elite athletes: you are interested in what the elite athletes have been exposed to that makes them better than the subelites. Another type of study compares athletes with sedentary people on some outcome such as an injury, disease, or disease risk factor. Here you know the difference in exposure (training vs no training), so these studies are really cohort or prospective, even though the exposure data are gathered retrospectively at only one time point. They are therefore known as historical cohort studies.
Experimental Studies

Experimental studies are also known as longitudinal or repeated-measures studies, for obvious reasons. They are also referred to as interventions, because you do more than just observe the subjects. In the simplest experiment, a time series, one or more measurements are taken on all subjects before and after a treatment. A special case of the time series is the so-called single-subject design, in which measurements are taken repeatedly (e.g. 10 times) before and after an intervention on one or a few subjects. Time series suffer from a major problem: any change you see could be due to something other than the treatment. For example, subjects might do better on the second test because of their experience of the first test, or they might change their diet between tests because of a change in weather, and diet could affect their performance of the test. The crossover design is one solution to this problem. Normally the subjects are given two treatments, one being the real treatment, the other a control or reference treatment. Half the subjects receive the real treatment first, the other half the control first. After a period of time sufficient to allow any treatment effect to wash out, the treatments are crossed over. Any effect of retesting or of anything that happened between the tests can then be subtracted out by an appropriate analysis. Multiple crossover designs involving several treatments are also possible. If the treatment effect is unlikely to wash out between measurements, a control group has to be used. In these designs, all subjects are measured, but only some of them--the experimental group--then receive the treatment. All subjects are then measured again, and the change in the control group is compared with the change in the experimental group.

If the subjects are assigned randomly to experimental and control groups or treatments, the design is known as a randomized controlled trial. Random assignment minimizes the chance that either group is not typical of the population. If the subjects are blind to the identity of the treatment, the design is a single-blind controlled trial. The control or reference treatment in such a study is called a placebo: the name physicians use for inactive pills or treatments that are given to patients in the guise of effective treatments. Blinding of subjects eliminates the placebo effect, whereby people react differently to a treatment if they think it is in some way special. In a double-blind study, the experimenter also does not know which treatment the subjects receive until all measurements are taken. Blinding of the experimenter is important to stop him or her treating subjects in one group differently from those in another. In the best studies even the data are analyzed blind, to prevent conscious or unconscious fudging or prejudiced interpretation. Ethical considerations or lack of cooperation (compliance) by the subjects sometimes prevent experiments from being performed. For example, a randomized controlled trial of the effects of physical activity on heart disease has yet to be reported, because it is unethical and unrealistic to randomize people to 10 years of exercise or sloth. But there have been many short-term studies of the effects of physical activity on disease risk factors (e.g. blood pressure).
Quality of Designs

The various designs differ in the quality of evidence they provide for a cause-and-effect relationship between variables. Cases and case series are the weakest. A well-designed crosssectional or case-control study can provide good evidence for the absence of a relationship. But if such a study does reveal a relationship, it generally represents only suggestive evidence of a causal connection. A cross-sectional or case-control study is therefore a good starting point to decide whether it is worth proceeding to better designs. Prospective studies are more difficult and time-consuming to perform, but they produce more convincing conclusions about cause and effect. Experimental studies are definitive about how something affects something else, and with far fewer subjects than descriptive studies! Double-blind randomized controlled trials are the best experiments. Confounding is a potential problem in descriptive studies that try to establish cause and effect. Confounding occurs when part or all of a significant association between two variables arises through both being causally associated with a third variable. For example, in a population study you could easily show a negative association between habitual activity and most forms of degenerative disease. But older people are less active, and older people are more diseased, so you're bound to find an association between activity and disease without one necessarily causing the other. To get over this problem you have to control for potential confounding factors. For example, you make sure all your subjects are the same age, or you do sophisticated statistical analysis of your data to try to remove the effect of age on the relationship between the other two variables.