Experimental, Non-experimental and Quasi-Experimental Research Designs

Experimental, Non-experimental and Quasi-Experimental Research Designs
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Introduction
Research design can be defined as the structure of the research, it's planning, and strategies. There are two main categories of research as quantitative research and qualitative research. Researchers use either of them according to requirements and feasibilityADDIN CSL_CITATION {"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"ISBN":"1412965578","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Creswell","given":"John W","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"edition":"3rd","id":"ITEM-1","issued":{"date-parts":[["2009"]]},"publisher":"SAGE Publications, Inc","publisher-place":"Los Angeles","title":"Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches","type":"book"},"uris":["/documents/?uuid=2d217b47-50b2-45a2-a196-5f97826704bc"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Creswell, 2009)","manualFormatting":" found by Creswell (2009)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Creswell, 2009)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Creswell, 2009)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} found by Creswell (2009). These designs are further divided into subcategories, such as the experimental and non-experimental designs in quantitative research. The experimental design is a type that involves two groups named as control and experimental group. Quasi-experimental is a subcategory of the experimental design. Non-experimental is the design which involves descriptive research. Following is a contrast and comparison of experimental, non-experimental and quasi-experimental designs.
Comparison of Research Designs
Experimental research is a design that involves different variables and participants divided into two groups with conditions. The process consists of comparing the two groups in which the experiment takes place on the experiment group and results are compared with the condition of control group participants. This shows the effect of cause and effect which is a major feature of experimental research design. As this design determines the cause and effect correctly due to the controlled environment, it is used in medical studies and in social sciences as well as explained by ADDIN CSL_CITATION {"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"DOI":"10.5152/balkanmedj.2014.1408","PMID":"25667779","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Süt","given":"Necdet","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"container-title":"Balkan Medical Journal","id":"ITEM-1","issue":"4","issued":{"date-parts":[["2014"]]},"title":"Study Designs in Medicine","type":"article-journal","volume":"31"},"uris":["/documents/?uuid=e6ced435-e78b-4b76-8d27-1ed588aa935e"]}],"mendeley":{"formattedCitation":"(Süt, 2014)","manualFormatting":"Süt (2014)","plainTextFormattedCitation":"(Süt, 2014)","previouslyFormattedCitation":"(Süt, 2014)"},"properties":{"noteIndex":0},"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}Süt (2014). This design involves some key features such as manipulating the variables, assigning the participants to each group randomly, samples are taken randomly and some important research ethics such as respecting the participants or involving them with their full consent. Non-experimental design is one that is correlational or may be descriptive. This can be a description of any situation or explaining the relation between a number of variables. This study is not based on an actual experiment.
When comparing the designs, the major concern is the validity of the results. As experimental design involves a controlled environment and practical study therefore, its results are likely to be more valid but this validity can be either internal or external validity. As compared to this, the results of a non-experimental study cannot be truly valid due to just being descriptive instead of based on a real experiment. On the contrary to this, the experimental study cannot be generalized it is based on two groups with selected participants but comparatively the results of non-experimental designs can be seen in a descriptive form as described by ADDIN CSL_CITATION {"citationItems":[{"id":"ITEM-1","itemData":{"DOI":"10.4135/9781506335674.n7","author":[{"dropping-particle":"","family":"O'Dwyer","given":"M Laura","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""},{"dropping-particle":"","family":"Bernauer","given":"James A","non-dropping-particle":"","parse-names":false,"suffix":""}],"chapter-number":"7","container-title":"Quantitative Research for Qualitative Researcer","id":"ITEM-1","issued...