I'm analyzing cell counts from brain tissue and per animal I have 4-6 tissue sections with my region of interest. My current approach is to take the average number of positive cells from each section within an animal and then run a one-way ANOVA with the averages from each animal.
For example, if I have 3 treatment groups with 5 sections from 4 animals per group, I have 60 data points. I am averaging the cell counts from the 5 sections per animal. Then using the average 'per section' cell count for the statistics, giving me an n = 4 for each group. I am then running a one-way ANOVA.
Is this the correct approach or is there a method that incorporates my subsamples?