What issues came up while entering data from Little and Maun 1996?

The other students at OSU, Dr. Wilson, and I were talking about some of the questions/uncertainties we had with entering the Little and Maun paper. We were able to work out most issues but we all had questions concerning step 5a (treatment vs. levels). We were unsure on how the treatments / levels would break down? What officially constitutes a treatment vs. a level? We entered the data in a few different ways and we think we found a setup that is correct. Then we looked at how the other groups entered their data and we realized that there was a great deal of variability in the results format between groups. We were wondering if we could spend some time going over the paper with you to see what you would consider the right answer to be. Maybe it would be beneficial for the entire NCEAS group to work through it together (reduce data entry variability) , but it may be something we have to do in a small group instead (based on time availability). We also had a specific question about the Little and Maun paper, do we include the buried and nematode treatments to use all the data in the paper or do we only include the treatments that look at +myc or nonmyc (to compare these 2 specific treatments)?

From Bala-

We discussed this at NAU a fair amount and decided to enter it at a 3 factor, fully crossed experiment.  Here was our setup:

Mycorrhizal treatment: 2 levels (control, inoculated)

Nematodes/pathogens: 2 levels (nematodes, no nematodes)

Other: 2 levels (buried, not buried)

Entering this paper brought up some good points:

1) Although it's necessary to put "control" and "inoculated" for the mycorrhizal treatments if there are only two levels, more specific titles for the levels of other factors are helpful later on, like "nematodes" or "no nematodes"

2) Nematodes/pathogens are something that we (the instructors) initially said we were interested in so we included the data for that factor. We are not specifically interested in sand burial, but it can be included as either "other" or "disturbance" to get all the data out of the paper.  If you didn't include the sand buried treatments you would have to make sure you entered only the 4 levels from non buried treatments (i.e. inoculated + no nematodes, control + no nematodes, inoculated + nematodes, control + nematodes).

3) Did your class enter the data on foliar growth rate into the MycoDB category of relative growth rate (RGR).  We debated this.

This is what we came up with at NAU. Please chime in if you interpreted the paper differently.  Thanks!

Bala