In my article "The Need for Psychology Understanding,” I discussed how fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. One such psychological concept is random assignment in research studies. Understanding random assignment and its importance is vital to writers who plan to write about research studies, those who plan to have a research study be a part of their plot, and/or those who create a character who is a researcher.

Importance of Randomization

Randomization has long been regarded as the gold standard of causal inference for its ability to empirically assess whether a therapeutic intervention can make a beneficial difference to individuals treated in clinical or medical practice (Rosnow & Rosenthal, 2013). Randomization in psychology experiments is vital as it assists in the elimination of potential bias as it does not allow researchers to favor one participant over another or for research to place a specific participant in the control or experimental group based on personal bias. The elimination of potential bias ensures the validity of the psychology experiment and ensures that the results are not contaminated by researcher placement bias. If psychology experiments were to be conducted without the utilization of randomization in placing the research participants in the experimental and control groups, and bias was found on the part of the researchers who handled the division, the entire experiment would be contaminated by the bias. This would make the results questionable, could negatively affect the researchers involved in the experiment, and financially harm those that funded the experiment as it would have to be redone in order to ensure the validity of the results.

Example of Randomization in Psychology

An example of the importance of randomization in psychology would be if there was a research study on the effects of service dogs on children with autism. For this hypothetical research study, there would be an experimental group and a control group; the experimental group participants would all be given service dogs while those in the control group would not. In this research study, randomization would ensure that each participant had an equal chance of getting a service dog and there would be no way for a researcher to favor one participant over another by choosing who would be placed in the experimental group. If the study was conducted without randomization the parents and/guardians of the autistic children participating in the study might lodge a complaint against the researchers for not selecting their child for a service dog. Depending on the study, the parents might be able to make a case for there having been an ethical violation due to favoritism or bias on behalf of the researchers. If the study used randomization and a parent or guardian tried to make the same complaint, it would be able to be diffused through explaining the random nature of the selection for both groups and the equal chance given to each participant to be selected for the experimental group.