{"title":"Half the price, twice the gain: How to simultaneously decrease animal numbers and increase precision with good experimental design.","authors":"Servan Luciano Grüninger, Florian Frommlet","doi":"10.1177/00236772241260905","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Animal research often involves experiments in which the effect of several factors on a particular outcome is of scientific interest. Many researchers approach such experiments by varying just one factor at a time. As a consequence, they design and analyze the experiments based on a pairwise comparison between two groups. However, this approach uses unreasonably large numbers of animals and leads to severe limitations in terms of the research questions that can be answered. Factorial designs and analyses offer a more efficient way to perform and assess experiments with multiple factors of interest. We will illustrate the basic principles behind these designs, discussing a simple example with only two factors before suggesting how to design and analyze more complex experiments involving larger numbers of factors based on multiway analysis of variance.</p>","PeriodicalId":18013,"journal":{"name":"Laboratory Animals","volume":" ","pages":"411-418"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11528980/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Laboratory Animals","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00236772241260905","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/9/24 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"VETERINARY SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Animal research often involves experiments in which the effect of several factors on a particular outcome is of scientific interest. Many researchers approach such experiments by varying just one factor at a time. As a consequence, they design and analyze the experiments based on a pairwise comparison between two groups. However, this approach uses unreasonably large numbers of animals and leads to severe limitations in terms of the research questions that can be answered. Factorial designs and analyses offer a more efficient way to perform and assess experiments with multiple factors of interest. We will illustrate the basic principles behind these designs, discussing a simple example with only two factors before suggesting how to design and analyze more complex experiments involving larger numbers of factors based on multiway analysis of variance.
期刊介绍:
The international journal of laboratory animal science and welfare, Laboratory Animals publishes peer-reviewed original papers and reviews on all aspects of the use of animals in biomedical research. The journal promotes improvements in the welfare or well-being of the animals used, it particularly focuses on research that reduces the number of animals used or which replaces animal models with in vitro alternatives.