What is a significant advantage of repeated measures in experimental design?

In experimental design, repeated measures involve using the same participants across all conditions of the experiment. This approach provides a significant advantage in controlling for participant variables. Since each participant serves as their own control, any individual differences that might influence the outcome are minimized. For instance, variations in age, gender, personality, or intelligence can all affect how a participant responds to different conditions. By utilizing repeated measures, researchers can reduce the amount of variability attributed to these participant-related factors, leading to more robust and reliable findings.

The advantages of reduced participant variables help ensure that the results are more likely to reflect the effect of the independent variable rather than differences among individuals. This is particularly useful in studies where the number of participants might be limited, as it maximizes the data obtained from each participant.

While using fewer participants is also a benefit of repeated measures, it is the control over participant variables that stands out as a significant advantage for enhancing the internal validity of a study. The other options, like eliminating demand characteristics or producing more quantitative data, do not specifically address the fundamental benefit of controlling for individual differences that can skew results.