What are Extension Research and Result Demonstration Trials?

Research trials and result demonstration trials can both be informative, but they differ in important ways.

Result demonstrations are meant to “demonstrate” or show something to interested parties and increase the awareness of a particular practice, variety, or technique. Generally, demonstrations are conducted after the superiority of something has already been established by thorough research.

Research, on the other hand, is intended to investigate whether a particular practice, technique, or input provides results superior to other such items. Research has high standards of “proof”, and these always exceed those of demonstration. For example, properly conducted research trials always include replication; the repetition of treatments within the experiment. It is only through replication and careful experimentation that differences among treatments can be said to be real and not some artifact of sampling error. In fact, data from research trials must be analyzed using accepted statistical procedures before any discussion of treatment differences can occur. Sometimes the reporting of statistical data can be confusing, and we have provided a little help in deciphering such information.

Extension personnel conduct hundreds of research and result demonstration trials each year. This is part of our Land Grant System heritage, and it is part of the service we are proud to provide to the people of Texas.