Counterbalancing is a technique used in repeated measures designs to control for order effects, such as practice or fatigue, that could bias results. In counterbalancing, the participant sample is divided into groups that experience the experimental conditions in different orders.
For example, in a study testing the effect of two types of music (classical and pop) on concentration, half the participants would complete a memory test while listening to classical music first and pop music second. The other half would complete the same tests but in the reverse order—pop music first, then classical. This approach helps ensure that any influence of the order itself is evenly distributed across conditions.
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