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Vitamin D is needed for the body to use calcium. An experiment is designed to st

ID: 3302196 • Letter: V

Question

Vitamin D is needed for the body to use calcium. An experiment is designed to study the effects of calcium and vitamin D supplements on bone health of first-year college students. There are 3 different possible doses of calcium (0, 200, and 400 mg) and 3 different possible doses of vitamin D (0, 50, and 100 international units). This means that there are 9 total treatments: all treatments will be administered as a single daily tablet, including the treatment of 0 mg of calcium and 0 international units of vitamin D. There are 180 subjects for the experiment, 90 men and 90 women. Answer the following questions in the text box provided. a. The researchers decide to block based on gender. Describe how they would divide the 180 subjects into treatment groups. b. Why would the researchers give the treatment of 0 mg calcium and 0 international units of vitamin D as a tablet rather than just not giving those subjects anything at all?

Explanation / Answer

a. The researcher will divide 180 subjects into two blocks: Block 1, Men subjects of 90 subjects and Block 2, Women subjects of 90 subjects. Researcher wants to see the differences in the effect between male and females

In each block, the 90 subjects will be allocated into three groups. In each group 30 subjects:

Group 1 will receive 0 mg calcium and 0 international unit vitamin D supplementation

Group 2 will receive 200 mg calcium and 50 IU vitamin D supplementation

Group 3 will receive 400 mg calcium and 100 IU vitamin D supplementation

b. Research gives the treatment of 0 mg calcium and 0 IU of vitamin D as a tablet rather than just not giving those subjects anything at all due to researchers want to avoid the placebo effect of supplementation. a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must, therefore, be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.