Quasi-Experimental Research
40 Key Takeaways and Exercises
Key Takeaways
- Quasi-experimental research involves the manipulation of an independent variable without the random assignment of participants to conditions or counterbalancing of orders of conditions.
- There are three types of quasi-experimental designs that are within-subjects in nature. These are the one-group posttest only design, the one-group pretest-posttest design, and the interrupted time-series design.
- There are three types of quasi-experimental designs that are between-subjects in nature. These are the posttest only design with nonequivalent groups, the pretest-posttest design with nonequivalent groups, the interrupted time-series design with nonequivalent groups.
- Quasi-experimental research eliminates the directionality problem because it involves the manipulation of the independent variable. However, it does not eliminate the problem of confounding variables, because it does not involve random assignment to conditions or counterbalancing. For these reasons, quasi-experimental research is generally higher in internal validity than non-experimental studies but lower than true experiments.
Exercises
- Practice: Imagine that two professors decide to test the effect of giving daily quizzes on student performance in a statistics course. They decide that Professor A will give quizzes but Professor B will not. They will then compare the performance of students in their two sections on a common final exam. List five other variables that might differ between the two sections that could affect the results.
- Discussion: Imagine that a group of obese children is recruited for a study in which their weight is measured, then they participate for 3 months in a program that encourages them to be more active, and finally their weight is measured again. Explain how each of the following might affect the results:
- regression to the mean
- spontaneous remission
- history
- maturation
