Experiment: Methodological Basis

Reference books usually present experiment designs as recipes, one of which should be chosen for each particular experiment. This approach extends to teaching and leads the researcher to understand that he is limited to the use of these experiment designs. The consequences are the underestimation of the planning of the experiment, the adaptation of research plans to these designs and the formulation of experiment structures inadequate to achieve the research objectives. This is a source of failure and inefficiency of many experiments, which implies waste of research resources. A rational procedure is presented to generate the design for each particular experiment that considers the structure of the experiment appropriately. It consists of the separate formulations of the condition structure and the unit structure, and the association of these two structures by the randomization of the treatment factors and presence of the intrinsic experimental factors. This approach leads to the clear identification of the confounding of effects of the condition structure and the unit structure and the components of the experimental error and the errors that affect effects of experimental factors.