Department of Psychology, University of York.
School of Psychology, University of Southampton.
Psychol Methods. 2021 Jun;26(3):295-314. doi: 10.1037/met0000337. Epub 2020 Jul 16.
When designing experimental studies with human participants, experimenters must decide how many trials each participant will complete, as well as how many participants to test. Most discussion of statistical power (the ability of a study design to detect an effect) has focused on sample size, and assumed sufficient trials. Here we explore the influence of both factors on statistical power, represented as a 2-dimensional plot on which iso-power contours can be visualized. We demonstrate the conditions under which the number of trials is particularly important, that is, when the within-participant variance is large relative to the between-participants variance. We then derive power contour plots using existing data sets for 8 experimental paradigms and methodologies (including reaction times, sensory thresholds, fMRI, MEG, and EEG), and provide example code to calculate estimates of the within- and between-participants variance for each method. In all cases, the within-participant variance was larger than the between-participants variance, meaning that the number of trials has a meaningful influence on statistical power in commonly used paradigms. An online tool is provided (https://shiny.york.ac.uk/powercontours/) for generating power contours, from which the optimal combination of trials and participants can be calculated when designing future studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
当设计涉及人类参与者的实验研究时,实验者必须决定每个参与者要完成多少个试验,以及要测试多少参与者。大多数关于统计功效(研究设计检测效果的能力)的讨论都集中在样本量上,并假设试验次数足够。在这里,我们探讨了这两个因素对统计功效的影响,用二维图表示等功效轮廓图,可以可视化等功效轮廓图。我们展示了试验次数特别重要的条件,即当个体内方差相对于个体间方差大时。然后,我们使用 8 种实验范式和方法的现有数据集(包括反应时间、感觉阈值、 fMRI、MEG 和 EEG)推导出功效轮廓图,并提供计算每种方法个体内和个体间方差估计值的示例代码。在所有情况下,个体内方差均大于个体间方差,这意味着试验次数对常用范式中的统计功效有重要影响。我们提供了一个在线工具(https://shiny.york.ac.uk/powercontours/),用于生成功效轮廓图,以便在设计未来研究时计算试验和参与者的最佳组合。(PsycInfo 数据库记录(c)2021 APA,保留所有权利)。
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