Correct Answer: B

Randomization is the process of randomly assigning participants to experimental or control groups. Its PRIMARY purpose is to:

Equally distribute both known and unknown confounding variables between groups

This ensures that any observed differences in outcomes can be attributed to the intervention rather than pre-existing group differences.

Key benefits of randomization:

• Controls for selection bias
• Distributes confounders (age, comorbidities, severity) evenly
• Strengthens internal validity
• Is the basis for the RCT — the gold standard of research design

Randomization does not eliminate measurement error (that requires reliability measures) or guarantee generalizability (that requires representative sampling).