the internal and external validity of quasi experimental

• Posttest Only, Nonequivalent Control Group Design
• Other types of quasi-experimental designs are also analogous to their experimental counterpasts, such as the Pretest-Postest Design   (and additional groups can be added to mimic the Solomon 4 Group).
• A hurricane hits and you assess how well emergency personnel put new training and procedures in place.
• New legislation requires all automobile drivers and passengers to wear seat belts.
• New state legislation mandates new testing for high school students.
• A state eliminates affirmative action considerations in collegiate admissions policies.
• A new therapy is publicized that purports to help autistic children.
• In research several decades ago, Martin Orne found that laboratory subjects would do virtually anything an experimenter asked them to do. They would eat bitter crackers for several minutes, they would throw what they were told was acid at a laboratory assistant, they would pick up snakes or prepare to eat worms.
• Participants may become nervous about being monitored , or exhibit evaluation apprehension . When people become anxious, many things happen. Physiological indicators, such as heart rate or blood pressure, change. If people are slightly anxious, they may do better on tests, performance, or assessments. However if people are very anxious ("flooded") they will almost certainly do worse
• People may try to " fake good ," to appear smarter, more attractive, or more tolerant than they normally are. Paper and pencil questionnaires are especially prone to these effects because often the answers are not checked for their veracity. (And, on online surveys, we may not even correctly know who anyone is .)
• It is not just individuals who have social desirability effects. A century ago, the famous writer Lev Tolstoy wrote about " Potemkin villages ." When the Czar of Russia went on cross-country trips, goverment officials were a little ways ahead of him. In cooperation with local government, they would erect false-fronted buildings (as on a movie set) and the best looking young men and women of the village would stand before these fake structures smiling and throwing flowers. While most groups or organizations will not go to this extent, they may "hide" their more embarassing members, "fudge" or slightly alter records, and claim your procedures were followed when they were not.
• You may need to deceive participants about the true purpose of the study (if you were told the purpose of the study was to measure leadership qualities in sports, might you try to "shape up?")
• Avoid collecting your own data ; don't act as your own experimenter or interviewer. Trade off with another student or apply for a small University or external grant to hire someone to supervise or interview. Try to avoid having your own expectations possibly influence results.
• Don't tell interviewers or experimenters the true purpose of the study and don't tell them (if possible) which participant is in which treatment condition. You might give each person a "generic overview" of the study ("this study is about which movies children like.")

• Research Design: Quasi-Experimental Design Words: 676
• Quasi-Experimental Research: Nutrition Words: 909
• Research Designs: Quantitative Reasoning and Analysis Words: 1482
• Strengths and Limitations of Research Designs Words: 1425
• Experimental Designs in Research Words: 930
• Research Designs in Healthcare Research Words: 1275
• Experimental, Quasi-Experimental, and Nonexperimental Research Words: 397
• Threats of Internal Validity in Research Words: 643
• Graphic Design of the 1950’s Words: 749
• Non-Experimental Research Design and Examples Words: 295

Quasi-Experimental Design and Internal Validity

Evaluation of the choice of design and the author’s rationale for the design choice.

A quasi-experimental design is a design which is commonly used when it is impossible to implement the methods of experimental design. Such kind of design can be helpful in social, educational and behavioral research. One of the main peculiarities of quasi-experimental design which explains its credibility and spread in the experimental world is the possibility to conduct research in real world circumstances and take into consideration the impacts from different fields that cannot be predicted. The examples of how a quasi-experimental design may be applied are perfectly observed in the articles by Bartholomew et al. (2008), who admit that the chosen design helped to consider even small changes in behavior of the participants and achieve the required results, and DeBourdeaudhuij et al. (2007), who proved that the chosen design could be applied for large scale dissemination. Frankfort-Nachmias and Nachmias (2007) define quasi-experimental design as the only appropriate study where more than one sample may be taken into consideration over a certain period of time. This is why the choice of the design by the authors of the articles is clear enough: with the help of this design, it is possible to use large scales of the experiments as well as to rely on the conditions, which are inherent to the real world.

The types of validity, critical differences among them, and the author’s performance in explaining them

Being a successful research deign for the experiments developed by Bartholomew et al. or DeBourdeaudhuij et al, a quasi-experimental design is characterized by a number of threats validity. These threats may vary considerably: construct, convergent, conclusion, external, criterion, predictive, concurrent, face, etc. The threads to validity are usually expresses via inappropriate selection of measurements or the collection of irrelevant data. Crewswell (2003) says that there are two important types of variables in any kind of research, dependent and independent, and if a mistake takes place, the development of the investigation may be under a threat. This is why, choosing this or that research design, a researcher should do everything possible to reduce the threats to validity to minimum, especially internal ones. For example, in Bartholomew et al. project (2008), it is identified that “the failure to obtain a standardized frequency of delivery likely lessoned the impact of the intervention” may provide a threat to internal validity (p. 302).

The study’s validity evaluation

Quantitative research designs have a number of advantages and disadvantages along with other peculiarities. A choice of a quantitative research design depends on the main idea of the study and the results which are desired to be achieved. The examples discussed above help to understand that study’s validity may depend on different factors, this is why the researchers should pay more attention to the designs, which promote the reduction of threats to validity. And one of the most credible ideas is considered to be a quasi-experimental design with the help of which some measurements may be re-established and pre- or post-tests can be administrated. This is why if there is a chance to use some combine methods, it is better to use it and try to achieve the best possible results. There are a number of external and internal factors, which may define the quality of the research conducted, and the idea to use the designs and reduce of threats to validity or measure the variables.

Reference List

Bartholomew, J., Miller, B., Ciccolo, J., Atwood, R., & Gottlieb, N. (2008). Walk Texas! 5-a-day intervention for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clients: A quasi-experimental study. Journal of Community Health, 33 , 297–303.

Crewswell, J. (2003). The purpose statement. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

DeBourdeaudhuij, I., Stevens, V., Vandelanoote, C., & Johannes, B. (2007). Evaluation of an interactive computer-tailored nutrition intervention in a real-life setting. Annals of Behavioral Medicine , 33 (1), 39–48.

Frankfort-Nachmias, C. & Nachmias, D. (2007). Cross-sectional and quasi-experimental research designs. Research methods in the social sciences . New York: Worth Publishers.

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