Question

unding has been secured to test the efficacy of a new antidepressant. participants who have been diagnosed with depression have been recruited and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. members of both groups have had the severity of their depression gauged by a reliable and valid instrument. over the next several weeks, the experimental group has been administered the new drug while the control group received standard treatment. at the completion of the study, the same instrument was used to measure depressive symptoms. which study design has the research team utilized?

Answer 1

Answer and

The study design utilized by the research team is a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The RCT is a type of experimental design in which participants are randomly assigned to an experimental group (which receives the intervention being tested, in this case, the new antidepressant) or a control group (which receives a placebo or standard treatment). The groups are then compared on an outcome measure (in this case, the severity of depressive symptoms) at the end of the study. The random assignment of participants to the groups helps to ensure that any differences in outcomes between the groups are due to the intervention and not some other factor.