Good Example Of Was The Study's Design A Between Or Within Subject Design? Essay

What was the purpose of this study? Explain why this study was done based on what was known about Breast cancer before.
The study was aimed at determining the options of the procedures to deal with early breast cancer among the patients with specific focus on early treatment involving radiation and chemotherapy as opposed to the removal of the lymph nodes.

Describe the sample of patients in terms of ALL of their important characteristics.

The removal of the lymph nodes is not necessary for women who are in early stages i.e. clinical stages T1 and T2. The biopsies showing that either one or the two nodes have cancer that cannot be felt during examination and that the cancer had not spread to other regions.
What was the independent variable and dependent variable, and each of their operational definitions? Was there one or more than one dependent variable?
Independent variable in this study is the treatment options for patients with breast cancers. Dependent variables are the time of survival and recurrence of cancer among the patients. In this case treatment options refer to removal of the lymph nodes or not among the breast cancer patients. The rate of survival and recurrence of cancer is the number of recurrences, and length of time of survival. It also includes the spread of cancer to other area.

The research design is between since different treatments are administered to separate patients. In this case, no one patient got the two types of treatment at a go.
Were there any extraneous or potentially confounding variables? If so, what were they & why? The why is very important, how were they controlled?
Yes, there were confounding variables such as the lifestyles of the patients can affect among many other things the rate of responses to the different types of treatment. In addition, the economic status that affects diet may also have an effect on the response. It would be good to choose sample with the same characteristics in terms of life styles and social economic status. These variables affect the response rate to the treatment and the survival rates after the treatment as well as the rate of recurrence of the cancer cells.

How would you rate the internal and external validity of this study?Explain your reason fully

Both the internal and external validity are good for the study. There is well-defined cause of inference and the experiment is well controlled in that the confounding variables do not affect the validity of the results.

What were the results and general conclusions drawn from this study?

The results showed that there is no difference from chemotherapy or radiation and removal of the lymph nodes. In this case, there is no need to remove the lymph nodes as there is no any advantage over the others.
If you were going to do a new study based on (A) what this study did, (B) its results and (C) the interpretation of the results, what kind of new study would you do and why?
I would study the effects of the chemotherapy and radiation as opposed to removal of the lymph nodes on advanced clinical levels of breast cancers. In this case, I would be seeking to validate the results and interpretations on whether they hold in advanced cases of breast cancer.