In Ancient Greece, the Doric order was one of their favoured architectural styles and offered the simplest way of decorating columns.. As you can see from the featured image, Doric columns have an undecorated square capital at their top.

I am sure you won’t get questions on ancient architectural styles in your GCSE Biology, but Doric (now DORIC) is perhaps a simpler way of remembering the key points to include in the experimental design questions in the exam.  I have written about CORMS before and there is nothing new in this post, simply a new acronym.

D stands for Dependent Variable.   This is what you will measure in your experiment.  The mark is often for how you plan to measure the dependent variable, how frequently you will take measurements etc.

O stands for Organisms.  What are the key variables relating to the organisms involved?  If using a living organism in your experiment (other than humans) often this involves using organisms of the same species, the same age and sometimes the same mass.  If you are using humans, you often need to standardise your groups for gender, health, age etc.

R stands for Repeats.  If you do more than one replicate of each set of conditions, it allows you to see how reliable your method is and also allows an average result to be calculated.  Think about how many repeats you think you would do: it depends on the experiment of course.  In a laboratory experiment, three might be sensible, if you are growing seeds to investigate germination, you might grow 200 identical seeds in a tray…..

I stands for Independent Variable.  This is the thing you are going to alter in the experiment.  So how do you intend to alter it and over what range?

C stands for Control Variables:  what are the variables that need keeping the same in every experiment in order to make the investigation a fair test?  Think what other factors might affect the dependent variable other than the one you are investigating.  And then think how you would keep them constant in an experiment.  I would suggest you need to identify at least two or three of the most obvious control variables to ensure you get full marks.

Simple!  DORIC is the new CORMS….