Our programme of work at the NC3Rs has led to a number of online resources made available to aid in designing animal experiments and reporting studies in publications.
This presentation was given by Dr Nathalie Percie du Sert at the HPRA/SFI/HRB 3Rs Conference on 17 May 2017. It provides an overview of our experimental design resources.
The 40-minute video covers:
- An overview of the experimental design resources available on the NC3Rs website
- The ARRIVE guidelines: improving the reporting of biomedical research using animals
- The EDA: improving the design of animal experiments
- SyRF: an online platform for performing systematic reviews
To read more about the key elements of a well-designed experiment, see Experimental design/statistics.
The ARRIVE guidelines and an ARRIVE checklist for use when submitting manuscripts are available, for download.
The Experimental Design assistant along with a user guide and video tutorials can be found on the EDA website.
A more detailed overview of the topics covered in the video is given below, with timeframes for each topic.
| An overview of resource tools available: | 01:55 |
| Background to reproducibility issues: | 02:30 |
| The ARRIVE guidelines: | 06:18 |
| The ARRIVE checklist: | 07:10 |
| Internal validity – randomisation: | 07:54 |
| Internal validity – blinding: | 11:18 |
| Internal validity – sample size calculation: | 13:58 |
| Journal endorsements: | 18:10 |
| ARRIVE resources: | 18:57 |
| The EDA: | 20:17 |
| The EDA diagram: | 21:00 |
| Feedback and advice from the EDA: | 25:33 |
| Supporting randomisation, blinding and sample size calculation: | 27:39 |
| EDA website resources: | 28:44 |
| Using the EDA diagram for communications: | 29:09 |
| The EDA workflow: | 29:45 |
| Objectives of the EDA: | 31:26 |
| Different uses of the EDA: | 34:01 |
| Systematic reviews of animal research: | 36:12 |
| The SyRF web app: | 38:13 |
| An example of how a systematic review has improved internal validity: | 39:55 |