Half the price, twice the gain: How to simultaneously decrease animal numbers and increase precision with good experimental design.

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.