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(2015) The Palgrave handbook of research design in business and management, Dordrecht, Springer.
Schjoedt and Sangboon hold a positivist ideology. In this chapter they discuss an important aspect of the unit of analysis strategy in research designs: How does one account for or control factors that the researcher is aware of in the model but are beyond the focus of a within-groups or between-groups comparison? In other words, control factors are confounding, moderating, or mediating variables. The reason it is important to identify and control (or account for) these factors is so that the researcher can generalize to other populations, that is, by identifying the confounding factors that are present but are beyond the unit of analysis interest. When participants are samples for a between-group unit of analysis comparison, individual attributes in each participant often differ. Designing control variables is one approach among others to address this.
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Schjoedt, L. , Sangboon, K. (2015)., Control variables: problematic issues and best practices, in K. D Strang (ed.), The Palgrave handbook of research design in business and management, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 239-261.
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