adj. having a constant ratio between quantities, such that the overall relationship does not change. For example, consider a researcher who is examining the differences between two treatments among males and females as follows: 10 males in Treatment A and 20 males in Treatment B; 20 females in Treatment A and 40 females in Treatment B. Although there are unequal numbers of people in each treatment condition, the ratio or proportion between them remains the same—twice as many females as males. In unbalanced designs, the presence or absence of such proportional cell frequency is critical to a researcher’s choice of analytic strategy.