Matched pairs

• participants are paired together on a variable or variables relevant to the experiment
• example- in a memory study participants may be matched on their IQ as this might be a good indicator of their ability t recall information
• one participant would from each pair would be allocated to a different condition in an attempt to control for the confounding variable of participant variable
• evaluation:

  • participants only take part in one condition so order effects and demand characteristics is less of a problem
  • participants can never be matched exactly
  • it is time consuming and expensive