A Social Science Research Team Presented an Explanation of the Design

A social science research team presented an explanation of the design of its study. The team plans to divide participants into two groups, one will be the experimental group and the other the control group. The team demonstrates, using a power analysis as explained in the chapter on Empirical Reasoning, that it has enough subjects to permit the proper statistical analyses to be run. This explanation represents which step in the scientific investigation?

A) Design a procedure to ensure that the data gathered will reveal the full range of possible observations.
B) Conduct the study or the experiment and gather the data.
C) Critique the findings.
D) Identify all the factors related to the hypothesis and the phenomenon of interest that it will be important to measure, control, or monitor.