Patients with anorexia nervosa were assigned to control and intervention groups then pre and post levels of anxiety and distress were measured. Is this quasi-experimental?
I agree with Leonhard Kratzer, that the way of assigning participants to the two groups is important. As for the rest, it looks much more experimental than quasi-experimental...
Third vote for an experimental design. Randomization is indeed important, and this should ensure that the two groups do not differ before the intervention on important variables such as symptom severity, anxiety, distress. If any variables do differ at time 1 (also demographic variables such as age, socioeconomic status), these should be controlled for statistically in the analyses. If the intervention group is then observed to be less anxious and/or distressed after the intervention, it can be assumed that the intervention caused this reduction. Whether or not there is a positive result, this is a manipulation - i.e. an experiment.
Thank you all for answering! I had to do a presentation critically analysing this study and there was some disagreement in my group over whether or not it was actually a quasi-experiment as it claimed. I read through the whole report and couldn't find anything indicating that the control and intervention groups were pre-set which is why I didn't see how it was quasi-experimental. I went with my original viewpoint with the support of these answers and it went well:)
Just continuing a bit this discussion, how would such a research be organized to qualify as quasi-experiment?
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Asia
- India