Sometimes you need to install a new bicycle crank, and it is not something you can necessarily do immediately or even quickly. Often you do not have the correct crank tool at hand. Different people would approach this in different ways.
Some people would whack away at the crank with whatever is at hand – a brick, a claw hammer, a rock – until they manage to remove it – likely in pieces. A person like this – I will call her Impatient Imogene - would likely stick in any old crank she could find, just so she could get the bike out there quickly. There is risk of injury or damage with this approach; in fact the frame might be so damaged that even a professional could not properly repair it. If other people become aware of this, they are not going to be likely to trust Imogene to look at their bikes. Other people are conscious of these risks so would approach this circumstance with more caution. A more cautious person might spend a lot of time considering the sources for purchasing a crank tool, eventually making a purchase decision. Even after procuring a tool, this more deliberate person might continue to assess other available tools. If she bought a Park ® brand tool, she might replacing that crank tool with a Pedros ® tool instead because those usually have yellow handles (instead of the blue used by Park ®). Once the tool decision is deemed final, this person might launch a more thorough investigation of replacement cranks. After all, there are one, two, or three-ring options and a variety of chainring tooth combinations exist. Assuming the frame is not proprietary, there are several types of bottom brackets to consider, too, assuming this is being replaced along with the crank. (And whether or not to replace the bottom bracket might be another thing to assess.) This person – I will call her Deliberate Dana - unlike Impatient Imogene above, is less likely to have injury or damage. Dana is also unlikely to get her bike in working order during the same calender year she began the repair. I have a one advantage over both Dana and Imogene – I would have already picked out a replacement crank before I even thought about removing the current one. I completed a factorial survey process for my dissertation research and now I am working on another health behavior research project with a group although we are using the same general design. There are a couple of potential challenges that have driven me to look toward a quota or unrandomized vignette design.
While I was doing my initial literature review for my dissertation, I started to have a bad feeling about the fractional factorial design (participants get a randomized sample of the vignette 'universe') because it seemed as if the more sophisticated researchers were using not just quota, but d optimal or d efficient designs. I stuck with what I had planned - the fully random vignette design and found ample support to do so, but filed away in the back of my brain the idea that I was going to need to work my way through quota designs in the future. Well, the future is here and I am compiling readings from the university library and the internet. This has taken me into what is for me a new world - the world of "design of experiments (DoE)." After completing some preliminary reading, I would conclude that most of my prior DoE exposure has focused on one element: sample size calculations. |
AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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