Describe and evaluate the independent groups design when designing a research study (6).

The independent groups design is an experimental design whereby two groups are exposed to different experimental conditions. Usually half of the participants are assigned to the experimental group where they are exposed to a condition where the independent variable is manipulated. The other half are assigned to a control group for comparison, where no such manipulation occurs.One advantage of using this design is that there are no order effects which affect the outcomes of the experiment. These happen when participants take part in both conditions of the experiment, and their performance differs across conditions as a result. For example, the practice at doing a memory task felt after the first condition could lead to better performance on the second memory task, irrespective of the manipulation of the independent variable.One disadvantage of this design is differences between the experimental and control groups may be due to individual differences between participants., rather than the effect of the independent variable. For example, due to chance, one group may have a better working memory than the other, and when given a memory task, that group will perform better, regardless of the independent variable manipulation, due to pre-disposed advantage. This could be mitigated with random sampling of participants.