Exam 10: Quasi-Experimental Designs

A small town decides to ban cell phone texting while driving. Before putting the law into effect, officials measure the amount of cell phone use among drivers by placing observers at a busy intersection and recording the percentage of drivers using phones. They do this over 6 consecutive one-week intervals, each week being the middle week of a month i.e., six months of pretesting). Right after the law is passed, officials repeat the observational study for another six months. Which of the following is true about the design of this study?

In a study designed to examine the effects of an intensive reading program, Vaughn et. al 2009) screened 2nd grade students and separated good readers from poor readers. The poor readers were given the intervention treatment. At the end of 26 weeks of intervention significant improvement in the poor readers was noted. What type of experimental design was employed in this study?

The nonequivalent comparison group design can yield several possible outcomes. In one scenario, the experimental group scores higher than the control group at the start of the experiment, and only the experimental group's scores increase from pretesting to posttesting. This could reflect an influence of the independent variable. However, it could also reflect

In a nonequivalent comparison group study,

When using the nonequivalent comparison group design, you can increase internal validity by

The non-equivalent comparison group design is a quasi-experimental design in which, for reasons of practicality, we cannot insure that the control and experimental groups are equivalent to each other when the experiment begins. The major interpretational difficulty imposed by this design is

Making a causal inference from quasi-experimental evidence requires all but which of the following:

Which of the following is NOT a bias that commonly exits in nonequivalent comparison group designs?

Differential drop out rates in your experimental and control groups selection-attrition) is most likely to be a problem in which of the following designs:

What is the primary threat to internal validity that could confound the results of a regression discontinuity study?

One strategy for dealing with preexisting differences between experimental and control groups in the nonequivalent comparison group design is to match the participants.

What is the "interruption" in an interrupted time series design?

Selection is a threat to the internal validity of which of the following designs?

Quasi-experimental designs lack the controls of strong experimental designs.

A researcher is carrying out a quasi-experimental study. She has the experimental groups in one lab and a control group in another lab. During the intervention phase of her study, the control school has a small fire that forces participants to leave the lab for one hour. She finds huge differences between the experimental and control groups after the study is completed. While there could be an effect of her intervention, a possible rival hypothesis might be:

In an) _________design, the experimenter takes multiple measures on the dependent variable both before and after treatment.

What is the main distinction between the nonequivalent comparison group design and the pretest-posttest control group design?

In which of the following circumstances would a researcher be most likely to choose a quasi- experimental research design?

In the physical education department, Dr. Shanz asks two of his strength training classes to participate in an experiment. One class will follow a traditional program of index finger strength enhancement, while the other class will try a new, experimental procedure. At the beginning of the semester, the class that will use the experimental method starts out with, on average, weaker index fingers than the other class. At the end of the semester, the class using the traditional method shows no significant increase in finger strength, while the other experimental class now has fingers that are, on average, significantly stronger than those of the control class. This is an example of an) _____effect.

The nonequivalent comparison group design can yield several possible outcomes. A possible outcome of the non-equivalent comparison group design is that the control group scores higher than the experimental group on the pretest and posttest but the experimental group improves more on posttesting. This could reflect the fact that the independent variable had an effect on the experimental group. It could also reflect