Description

This tutorial material in PowerPoint is the fourth of an eleven-part package designed and used regularly for teaching research methodology to post-graduate students and research scholars. This part discusses ‘experimental design’ as an important research design methodology. The tutorial presents a set of basic concepts, basic principles & validity of experimental design together with design types and steps. Discussion also includes ‘experiments’, ‘quasi-experiments’ and ‘single-case research’. It may be noted that ‘ex-post facto research’, which is also called ‘experimentation in reverse’ is discussed in Part 3. Most empirical studies in social and behavioral studies are quasi-experimental or single-case studies rather than truly experimental. Experimental design is the basic design of logical proof. It helps in testing hypotheses, leads to inference on causality, employs a set of control & experimental groups of units, administers treatments / stimuli, requires controlled observation of change & development in variables. In other words, experimental or hypothesis testing studies involve studying causal relationship between variables and draw inferences about causality. Three basic principles of experimental design are replication, randomisation and local control.

The tutorial enumerates ABAB design as a simple single case research, presents (with illustrations and examples) some experimental designs like (1) Method of agreement, Negative canon of agreement and Method of difference as part of Classical Design of J.S.MILL with their limitations, (2) ‘Before-and-after without control’, ‘After only with control’ and ‘Before-and-after with control’ as Informal Experimental Designs, and (3) Completely randomised design. (CR), ‘Randomised block design’ (RB), ‘Latin square design’ (LS) and ‘Factorial design’ (both Simple and Complex) as Formal Experimental Designs.