ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Additional information > Treatment groups > Specifying whether to run experiments blind

Specifying whether to run experiments blind

In brief

Selecting the Run experiments blind option in the Treatment groups settings causes ANY-maze to hide the actual treatments the animals receive from the experimenter. Although you might think that this is unnecessary in an automated system, you may still find it useful if you plan to use keys to record behaviours which the system can't score automatically.

Details

Choosing to run an experiment blind will have the following effects:

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The treatment groups you enter will be given random, single letter codes.

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Until all the tests in the experiment are complete, the system will only refer to the treatments using their codes - i.e. the actual names of the treatments will be hidden from the experimenter.

Because the treatments are coded, the experimenter won't know which is which - but of course someone will have to know this, in order to label the treatments with the appropriate codes.

The actual coding which has been applied can be seen by selecting the Reveal treatment coding button on the Experiment page. When running a blind experiment, you will normally want to ask a colleague to do this, so as to find out what the codes are, and to label your treatments appropriately.

You can change this option at any time; if you switch it off, ANY-maze will start to show you treatment names as well as codes (although it won't be able to 'un-randomise' the codes).

ANY-maze help topic T0586