what kind of research design is this?

[EmpathyHeals]

when ONE group of therapists are exposed to three drawings of either skinny, normal, or overweight drawings of hypothetical male clients. This group of therapists is exposed randomly to one of these three drawings 63 times and each time the therapist is asked to rate the individual on one of 21 5-point scales to assess personality characteristics. The results indicated that normal body types were rated as more favorably than the other two extreme body types on each scale.
The HYPOTHESIS was that body type of clients affects the clinical judgment of professional therapists and the conclusion stated that client body types may influence clinically relevant evaluations of professional therapists. Subjects were 23 therapists chosen from a pool of 100 licensed therapists in an organization, however no information is given on whether they were randomly chosen for the study.

What is the design used in this study?

I am becoming confused with finding very many research methods yet very few seem to apply because there is no test condition. Please help me identify the kind of study this is and if you're extra helpful you may help me understand why this is or is not a good way of testing this hypothesis. Thank you!

[trinker]

I am becoming confused with finding very many research methods yet very few seem to apply because there is no test condition.

What do you mean by this?

What I initially see is you have a numeric (IV) rating and a categorical DV (body type). This could be done with regression/anova. THat's one possibility. Secondly you could thee the IV as categorical (5 pt scale) and use a chi squared. Ordinal logistic regression may be another choice.

[EmpathyHeals]

I mean that I don't know what kind of research design this is (still don't) because all the ones I'm reading about seem to include some kind of treatment: a group that either receives the intervention or doesn't. In this example every participant is exposed to the three body types over and over (63 times) but no manipulation occurs between one test and another... so there is no treatment/intervention to compare against another. My guess from what I've researched so far is that it's a within-subjects, noninterrupted time series, experimental design. Or is this a non-experimental study? I can't tell whether there is a causal hypothesis here or associative: extreme body types are associated with worse ratings by therapists or is an extreme body type the causal variable and therapist attitude the effect variable? Thanks for any (more) help! The previous answer was useful but I am still not sure what the research design is called that fits this. What kind of study is it?

[Karabiner]

In this example every participant is exposed to the three body types over and over (63 times) but no manipulation occurs between one test and another...

Your three types of stimuli are the experimental manipulation. You have a factor "body type"
with three levels.

Kind regards

K.