Design Sensitivity

All researchers face an important challenge - designing research that will have sufficient sensitivity to detect those effects it purports to investigate. Sample size, validity and sensitivity, experimental error, subject variability, and the type of statistical analysis all influence the sensitivity of a research design. Through careful explanations and selection of examples, Lipsey examines the concept of design sensitivity and explains statistical power and the elements that determine it.

Whether in the laboratory or while doing fieldwork, all researchers face an important challenge - designing research that will have sufficient sensitivity to detect those effects it purports to investigate. Sample size, validity, and sensitivity, experimental error, subject variability and the type of statistical analysis all influence the sensitivity of a research design.

In this volume Lipsey examines the concept of design sensitivity and explains statistical power and the elements that determine it. Through careful explanations and selection of examples he explores a variety of topics: factors that degrade design sensitivity, effect size parameters and approaches to assessing it, how to estimate statistical power for various statistical tests, and the special problems statistical power poses for treatment effectiveness research. This book is a vital resource for evaluators, methodologists, statisticians, psychologists, public health professionals and educators.

Mark W. Lipsey is the Director of the Center for Evaluation Research and Methodology, and a Senior Research Associate, at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies (Ph.D. in Psychology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1972). His professional interests are in the areas of public policy, program evaluation research, social intervention, field research methodology, and research synthesis (meta-analysis).  The topics of his recent research have been risk and intervention for juvenile delinquency and substance use, early childhood education programs, and issues of methodological quality in program evaluation research. Professor Lipsey serves on the editorial boards of Evaluation and Program Planning, Psychological Bulletin, the Journal of Experimental Criminology, and the American Journal of Community Psychology, and boards or committees of, among others, the National Research Council, the Department of Education What Works Clearinghouse, Campbell Collaboration, and Blueprints for Violence Prevention. He is a recipient of the American Evaluation Association's Paul Lazarsfeld Award, the Society of Prevention Research's Nan Tobler Award, a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, and co-author of the program evaluation textbook, Evaluation: A Systematic Approach and the meta-analysis primer, Practical Meta-Analysis.