Application of Experimental Design Term Paper

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limiting a researcher's view of the problem are situational factors that can skew the results of her experiment, i.e., effects of pretesting, social threats, and group differences (Trochim, 2008, 188). External factors, such as possible sample size, can limit even the type of testing available to the researcher. As such, researchers have come up with a number of different types of designs over the years. This essay will compare and contrast two of these; experimental and quasi-experimental designs.

"Experimental designs are often touted as the most rigorous of all research designs" (Trochim, 2008, 186). What is so rigorous about them is that they are the strongest type of design in regards to their internal validity (Trochim, 2008, 186). This is because the basic form of the experimental design uses random assignment, or chance to group participants. In effect, this makes the two groups, if selected from the same sample, basically equivalant -- the only thing that separates them is chance.

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This enables the researcher to actually "calculate the chance that the two groups will differ just because of the random assignment (that is, by chance alone)" (Trochim, 2008, 189).

The way that experimental designs control internal validity so well is a function of their structure. A simple experimental design called a two-group, posttest-only, randomized design uses random assignment to create two groups; one in which treatment is offered (for example), and one that receives no treatment at all. Posttesting is then performed. If the treatment group shows a different outcome than the no-treatment group, we might be able to conclude that the different outcome was a result of the treatment. We are confident in the experiment's internal validity because, since groups were assigned randomly, we know that the….....

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