Ed 603 - Lesson 13 - Experimental Research

Lesson 13 will consist of the following topics

· Text Assignment for Lesson 13

· Experimental Research

· Group Experimental Designs

· Single Subject Experimental Designs

· Lesson 13 Assignment

· Lesson 13 Quiz

Text Assignment for Lesson 13

For lesson 13, read pages 355-358, 368-392 in Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application, Seventh Edition by L. R. Gay and Peter Airasian (2003, Merrill/Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-099463-4)

or read pages 232-236, 247-263, 274-284 in Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application, Eighth Edition by Lorrie Gay, Geoffrey Mills, and Peter Airasian (2006, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-118534-9)

or read pages 298-306, 311-328 in Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research, 3^rd Edition by John W. Creswell (2008, Merrill/Prentice Hall, ISBN-13: 978-0-13-613550-0)

Experimental Research

With both experimental research and causal-comparative research, the researcher is attempting to describe a causal relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable. This attempt can only be accomplished completely successfully in the case of an experimental research design.

The major difference between causal-comparative and experimental research is that the researcher has control over the independent variable in experimental research and can manipulate this variable at will. In the case of causal-comparative research, the independent variable is established by the identiity of the groups chosen and is not under experimental control. For the variable, gender, we can't randomly assign the values of male and female to our subjects, they are predetermined. So a study attempting to determine the relationship between gender and some independent variable would be a causal-comparative research design. On the other hand, a study attempting to describe the relationship between the use or non-use of colored overlays on the frequency of oral reading errors would be an experimental study if the subjects were randomly placed in the experimental and control groups.

Group Experimental Designs

There are a number of types of group experimental design. Each of these types of designs is covered in detail in the text (Gay & Airasian, 2000, pages 386-400).

• Pre-Experimental Designs
1. The One-Shot Case Study
2. The One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design
3. The Static-Group Comparison
• True Experimental Designs
1. The Pretest-Posttest Control Group Design
2. The Posttest-Only Control Group Design
3. The Solomon Four-Group Design
• Quasi-Experimental Designs
1. The Nonequivalent Control Group design
2. The Time-Series Design
3. Counterbalanced Designs
• Factorial Designs

Single Subject Experimental Designs

There are also a number of types of single-subject research designs. These are covered in detail in the text for this course (Gay & Airasian, 2000, pages 400-411).

• A-B-A Withdrawal Designs
1. The A-B-A Design
2. The A-B-A-B Design
• Multiple-Baseline Designs
• Alternating Treatments Design

Lesson 13 Assignment

Click on Lesson 13 Assignment to go to the assignment for Lesson 13.

Lesson 13 Quiz

Click on Lesson 13 Quiz to go to the Quiz for Lesson 13.

Please send electronic mail to the course instructor if you have any questions about this lesson or other concerns.

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Updated 4/7/03 by John Wasson [ wasson@mnstate.edu]