The Classic Wanderer

What Is A Single Blind Study In Psychology?

• Sabrina Sarro
• 05.05.2023
• 0
• 11

(SING-gul-blind STUH-dee) A type of clinical trial in which only the researcher doing the study knows which treatment or intervention the participant is receiving until the trial is over.

What is an example of a single blind study?

Example: Yogurt Tasting Section – Researchers are comparing a low-fat blueberry yogurt to a high-fat blueberry yogurt. Participants are randomly assigned to receive one type of yogurt. After tasting it, they complete an online survey. The researchers know which yogurt containers are low-fat and which are high-fat, but participants are not told.

What is a single vs double-blind study in psychology?

In a single-blind study, only the participants are blinded. In a double-blind study, both participants and experimenters are blinded. In a triple-blind study, the assignment is hidden not only from participants and experimenters, but also from the researchers analyzing the data.

What is a double-blind study in psychology?

Listen to pronunciation. (DUH-bul-blind STUH-dee) A type of clinical trial in which neither the participants nor the researcher knows which treatment or intervention participants are receiving until the clinical trial is over. This makes results of the study less likely to be biased.

What is a single blind study in psychology quizlet?

Single blind. experiment in which only the participants are unaware of which participants received treatment.

When would you use a single blind study?

A single-blind study is used when the researcher is the expert and would be the best person to perform the experiment. It can also be used if the researcher does not have a vested interest in the outcome of the experiment.

Is single blind study ethical?

Conclusion – The use in the everyday practice of single-blind and double-blind test paradigms in the treatment of peripheral neuro-pathic pain seems feasible and is ethically justified. The use of a double-blind test in particular can subsequently be followed by a more extended double-blind placebo-controlled N-of-1 treatment paradigm of 2 to several weeks.

A fast response test (of 30 minutes), possibly followed by an extended double-blind placebo-controlled N-of-1 cross over treatment paradigm, will lead to quicker identification of the optimal therapy for our patients. Both initial fast response tests as well as the extended response test qualify for use in the clinical practice.

The use of such paradigms is not only in line with the McMasters criteria, but is also supported by secondary medical ethical literature on the use of placebos in the clinical practice, and by the formal criteria of the 2008 American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.

For such practical test paradigms, there would not be the requirement of an IRB approval, on the contrary, as we argued, this would induce new ethical problems, related to unnecessary delays in therapy and feasibility problems. Double-blind placebo-controlled test paradigms therefore can be seen as an intrinsic part of our clinical practice, outside of the context of a formal clinical trial.

Both our single-blind and double-bind test paradigms illustrate the value of such approach in the clinic.

Do researchers prefer single or double-blind?

The Physics Experiment – At the start of 2017, the Institute of Physics (IOP) gave authors the option to choose double-blind peer review. This option was available for Materials Research Express and Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express, Over the first seven months, 20% of authors chose the double-blind peer review option. IOP data indicates that more papers received rejections under the double-blind model. About 70% of papers received a rejection in the double-blind peer review process. On the other hand, only 50% of papers received rejection under single-blind peer review.

The difference could be due to reviewers assuming that authors requesting this option had written poor papers. It could also be due to reviewers acting more objectively. However, authors in the double-blind trial were satisfied and felt it was the fairest approach. Bias in peer review is a real problem.

There have been many studies showing that women and minorities are less likely to get published, funded, or promoted. This bias can be both conscious and unconscious. Within scientific publishing, this means that fewer women are asked to review papers.

Why is double-blind study best?

Double blind studies prevent bias when doctors evaluate patients’ outcomes. This improves reliability of clinical trial results. Should you have health complications during a trial, such as a possible drug reaction, your doctor can ‘unblind’ you and find out which treatment you’re receiving.

What makes a study blind or double-blind?

Issues of Concern – Blinding covers any of the numerous participants of the clinical trial, e.g., researchers, subjects, technicians, and data analysts. Single-, double-, and triple-blinding are commonly used blinding strategies in clinical research. A single-blind study masks the subjects from knowing which study treatment, if any, they are receiving.

• A double-blind study blinds both the subjects as well as the researchers to the treatment allocation.
• Triple-blinding involves withholding this information from the patients, researchers, as well as data analysts.Randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled trials involve the random placement of participants into two groups; an experimental group that receives the investigational treatment and a control group that acquires a placebo.

Neither the researchers nor the study subjects know who is getting the experimental treatment and who is getting a placebo. This type of clinical study ranks as the gold standard for the validation of treatment interventions. Unfortunately, blinding is not possible to achieve in all clinical trials.

What are examples of double-blind in psychology?

A double-blind study is one in which neither the participants nor the experimenters know who is receiving a particular treatment. This procedure is utilized to prevent bias in research results. Double-blind studies are particularly useful for preventing bias due to demand characteristics or the placebo effect,

Is double-blind observational study?

Observational Studies. Double-blind studies involve giving participants a treatment ; in other words, ‘intervening’ in their lives. They all fall in the category of an ‘intervention trial.’

What is the opposite of a double-blind study?

A type of study in which the patients (single-blinded) or the patients and their doctors (double-blinded) do not know which drug or treatment is being given. The opposite of a blinded study is an open label study.

What is a single vs blind study?

In a single-blind study, patients do not know which study group they are in (for example whether they are taking the experimental drug or a placebo). In a double-blind study, neither the patients nor the researchers/doctors know which study group the patients are in.

How is single blind study done?

A single-blind study occurs when the participants are deliberately kept ignorant of either the group to which they have been assigned or key information about the materials they are assessing, but the experimenter is in possession of this knowledge. Single-blind studies are typically conducted when the participants’ knowledge of their group membership or the identity of the materials they are assessing might bias the results.

How to do a single blind study?

What Is The Difference Between Single Blind And Double Blind Clinical Trials? When undertaking a clinical trial, the two major models that one can use are the single blind and double blind trials. Selecting the right trial is important since it can affect the outcome of the trial or introduce errors.

The ideal model should be selected based on the type of trial and other variables. For any clinical trial, there are usually two groups of people who are experimented on. Members of one group are given a placebo, and the members of another group are given the treatment that is being studied. This is so as to compare the effectiveness of the treatment to placebo.

In a single blind study, the participants in the clinical trial do not know if they are receiving the placebo or the real treatment. This is done to reduce the risk of errors, since some participants might produce spurious results if they know that they are taking the placebo or medication.

In this model, the experimenter monitoring the participants knows which individuals received the placebo and which ones got the treatment under examination. In a double-blind study, both the participants and the experimenters do not know which group got the placebo and which got the experimental treatment.

This is considered to be the superior model of clinical research since it eliminates outcomes that are produced due to placebo effect, as well as observer bias by the experimenter. The fact that the experimenter does not know which group received the placebo or the experimental drug means that the risk of conscious and unconscious observer bias is reduced, making the study more accurate.

What are the negatives of single blind study?

Single blind – In a “Single blind” process, the reviewers’ identities are kept anonymous. Pros: Reviewers, are able to critique a manuscript objectively without any external influence or pressure. At times when there might be more of a need for constructive criticism, a single-blind review safeguards reviewers from the prospect of conflict with the author by maintaining anonymity.

reviewer bias, where there may be some antagonism between reviewer or author academic or professional competition. in a study carried out by the Publishing Research Consortium, only 52% of researchers surveyed would label Single blind reviewing as “effective.” 1

What do single blind experiments only control for?

Single-blind experiments only control for demand characteristics. In a single-blind experiment, subjects are not told which of the treatment conditions they are in; a procedure used to control demand characteristics.

Why is a blind study good?

Blinding is an important methodologic feature of RCTs to minimize bias and maximize the validity of the results.

Who is unaware in a single blind study?

Blind Procedures: Single-blind and Double-blind Studies Ideally, the people who observe and record the children’s behavior are unaware of who was assigned to the experimental or control group, in order to control for experimenter bias. Experimenter bias refers to the possibility that a researcher’s expectations might skew the results of the study.

• Remember, conducting an experiment requires a lot of planning, and the people involved in the research project have a vested interest in supporting their hypotheses.
• If the observers knew which child was in which group, it might influence how much attention they paid to each child’s behavior as well as how they interpreted that behavior.

By being blind to which child is in which group, we protect against those biases. This situation is a single-blind study, meaning that one of the groups (participants) are unaware as to which group they are in (experiment or control group) while the researcher who developed the experiment knows which participants are in each group.

1. In a double-blind study, both the researchers and the participants are blind to group assignments.
2. Why would a researcher want to run a study where no one knows who is in which group? Because by doing so, we can control for both experimenter and participant expectations.
3. If you are familiar with the phrase placebo effect, you already have some idea as to why this is an important consideration.

The placebo effect occurs when people’s expectations or beliefs influence or determine their experience in a given situation. In other words, simply expecting something to happen can actually make it happen. The placebo effect is commonly described in terms of testing the effectiveness of a new medication.

1. Imagine that you work in a pharmaceutical company, and you think you have a new drug that is effective in treating depression.
2. To demonstrate that your medication is effective, you run an experiment with two groups: The experimental group receives the medication, and the control group does not.
3. But you don’t want participants to know whether they received the drug or not.

Why is that? Imagine that you are a participant in this study, and you have just taken a pill that you think will improve your mood. Because you expect the pill to have an effect, you might feel better simply because you took the pill and not because of any drug actually contained in the pill—this is the placebo effect.

1. To make sure that any effects on mood are due to the drug and not due to expectations, the control group receives a placebo (in this case a sugar pill).
2. Now everyone gets a pill, and once again neither the researcher nor the experimental participants know who got the drug and who got the sugar pill.
3. Any differences in mood between the experimental and control groups can now be attributed to the drug itself rather than to experimenter bias or participant expectations.

This text is adapted from

How is single blind study done?

A single-blind study occurs when the participants are deliberately kept ignorant of either the group to which they have been assigned or key information about the materials they are assessing, but the experimenter is in possession of this knowledge. Single-blind studies are typically conducted when the participants’ knowledge of their group membership or the identity of the materials they are assessing might bias the results.

What is a single vs blind study?

In a single-blind study, patients do not know which study group they are in (for example whether they are taking the experimental drug or a placebo). In a double-blind study, neither the patients nor the researchers/doctors know which study group the patients are in.

Who is blinded in single blind study?

Human behaviour is influenced by what we know or believe. In research there is a particular risk of expectation influencing findings, most obviously when there is some subjectivity in assessment, leading to biased results. Blinding (sometimes called masking) is used to try to eliminate such bias.

1. It is a tenet of randomised controlled trials that the treatment allocation for each patient is not revealed until the patient has irrevocably been entered into the trial, to avoid selection bias.
2. This sort of blinding, better referred to as allocation concealment, will be discussed in a future statistics note.

In controlled trials the term blinding, and in particular “double blind,” usually refers to keeping study participants, those involved with their management, and those collecting and analysing clinical data unaware of the assigned treatment, so that they should not be influenced by that knowledge.

• The relevance of blinding will vary according to circumstances.
• Blinding patients to the treatment they have received in a controlled trial is particularly important when the response criteria are subjective, such as alleviation of pain, but less important for objective criteria, such as death.
• Similarly, medical staff caring for patients in a randomised trial should be blinded to treatment allocation to minimise possible bias in patient management and in assessing disease status.

For example, the decision to withdraw a patient from a study or to adjust the dose of medication could easily be influenced by knowledge of which treatment group the patient has been assigned to. In a double blind trial neither the patient nor the caregivers are aware of the treatment assignment.

• Blinding means more than just keeping the name of the treatment hidden.
• Patients may well see the treatment being given to patients in the other treatment group(s), and the appearance of the drug used in the study could give a clue to its identity.
• Differences in taste, smell, or mode of delivery may also influence efficacy, so these aspects should be identical for each treatment group.

Even colour of medication has been shown to influence efficacy.1 In studies comparing two active compounds, blinding is possible using the “double dummy” method. For example, if we want to compare two medicines, one presented as green tablets and one as pink capsules, we could also supply green placebo tablets and pink placebo capsules so that both groups of patients would take one green tablet and one pink capsule.

Blinding is certainly not always easy or possible. Single blind trials (where either only the investigator or only the patient is blind to the allocation) are sometimes unavoidable, as are open (non-blind) trials. In trials of different styles of patient management, surgical procedures, or alternative therapies, full blinding is often impossible.

In a double blind trial it is implicit that the assessment of patient outcome is done in ignorance of the treatment received. Such blind assessment of outcome can often also be achieved in trials which are open (non-blinded). For example, lesions can be photographed before and after treatment and assessed by someone not involved in running the trial.

Indeed, blind assessment of outcome may be more important than blinding the administration of the treatment, especially when the outcome measure involves subjectivity. Despite the best intentions, some treatments have unintended effects that are so specific that their occurrence will inevitably identify the treatment received to both the patient and the medical staff.

Blind assessment of outcome is especially useful when this is a risk. In epidemiological studies it is preferable that the identification of “cases” as opposed to “controls” be kept secret while researchers are determining each subject’s exposure to potential risk factors.

In many such studies blinding is impossible because exposure can be discovered only by interviewing the study participants, who obviously know whether or not they are a case. The risk of differential recall of important disease related events between cases and controls must then be recognised and if possible investigated.2 As a minimum the sensitivity of the results to differential recall should be considered.

Blinded assessment of patient outcome may also be valuable in other epidemiological studies, such as cohort studies. Blinding is important in other types of research too. For example, in studies to evaluate the performance of a diagnostic test those performing the test must be unaware of the true diagnosis.

In studies to evaluate the reproducibility of a measurement technique the observers must be unaware of their previous measurement(s) on the same individual. We have emphasised the risks of bias if adequate blinding is not used. This may seem to be challenging the integrity of researchers and patients, but bias associated with knowing the treatment is often subconscious.

On average, randomised trials that have not used appropriate levels of blinding show larger treatment effects than blinded studies.3 Similarly, diagnostic test performance is overestimated when the reference test is interpreted with knowledge of the test result.4 Blinding makes it difficult to bias results intentionally or unintentionally and so helps ensure the credibility of study conclusions.

What is an example of a double-blind study?

A double-blind study is one in which neither the participants nor the experimenters know who is receiving a particular treatment. This procedure is utilized to prevent bias in research results. Double-blind studies are particularly useful for preventing bias due to demand characteristics or the placebo effect,