Section 12.3 Planning your design
Our discussion of effect size and power highlight the importance of the understanding the statistical limitations of an experimental design. In particular, we have seen the relationship between:
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Sample-size
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Effect-size
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Alpha criterion
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Power
As a general rule of thumb, small N designs can only reliably detect very large effects, whereas large N designs can reliably detect much smaller effects. As a researcher, it is your responsibility to plan your design accordingly so that it is capable of reliably detecting the kinds of effects it is intended to measure.
