Question

A researcher wants to assess the effects of taking prenatal vitamins on the health of​ newborns, using the newborn weight as the response variable. explain why it might be inappropriate to use a designed experiment to address this research objective.

Answer 1

It is inappropriate to conduct a designed experiment on the impact of prenatal vitamins on newborn weight due to ethical concerns of depriving a control group of potentially beneficial vitamins and practical difficulties in controlling all environmental and genetic factors affecting the baby's weight. Therefore, observational studies are a suitable alternative.

Step-by-step explanation:

Experimental Design and Ethics in Prenatal Research:

When considering the use of a designed experiment to assess the effects of prenatal vitamins on the health of newborns, with a focus on newborn weight, there are significant ethical and practical concerns that render it inappropriate. Primarily, ethical considerations take precedence; it would be unethical to withhold prenatal vitamins from a control group if there is already substantial evidence suggesting their benefit. Furthermore, practical constraints such as the inability to control for all the environmental and genetic variables that may influence the baby's weight would undermine the reliability of the results.

Observational studies offer an alternative, allowing researchers to observe outcomes in populations where prenatal vitamin use varies without actively manipulating the treatment. This approach mitigates ethical concerns and helps identify correlations without assigning potentially harmful treatments or withholding beneficial care. As a result, despite potential limitations in establishing causality, observational studies are often preferred for such sensitive and ethically charged research questions.

The issue of random assignment in prenatal studies runs parallel to the difficulties associated with research on birth order and personality. Birth order cannot be controlled or assigned, making randomized experiments impossible. Similarly, ethics forbid certain experimental manipulations in prenatal studies, necessitating the use of non-experimental research designs like observational studies or natural experiments.

Answer 2

The design of experiments is the design of any assignment that targets to label or clarify the difference of information in conditions that are assumed to imitate the variation. It might be unsuitable to use a designed experiment to address this research objective because there is a professed benefit to taking prenatal vitamins, there would be moral issues accidentally denying them to some pregnant women.