Experimental Research Design

Associate Professor  Dr. Wongsa Laohasiriwong

Faculty of Public Health, Khon Kaen University
May 15, 2017

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 Definitions Experimental Research

Experimental design is a way to carefully plan experiments in advance so that y

our results are both objective and valid. Ideally, your experimental design shoul
d:
• Describe how participants are allocated to experimental groups. A common method is c
ompletely randomized design, where participants are assigned to groups at random. A s
econd method is randomized block design, where participants are divided into homogen
eous blocks (for example, age groups) before being randomly assigned to groups.
• Minimize or eliminate confounding variables, which can offer alternative explanations f
or the experimental results.
• Allow you to make inferences about the relationship between independent variables and
 dependent variables.
• Reduce variability, to make it easier for you to find differences in treatment outcomes.2
 Experimental Variables

• Independent variable (IV)

– the controlled factor in an experiment
– hypothesized to cause an effect on another variable
• Dependent variable (DV)
– the measured facts
– hypothesized to be affected
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 Independent Variable

• Causes something to happen

• The variable manipulated by the experimenter
• The variable which should change the dependent variabl
e
• variable is controlled by the experimenter

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 Dependent Variable
• The experimental variable which is affected by the indep
endent variable
• The “effect variable”
• The outcome of the experiment
• The variable being observed and measured

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 Experimental Group
The subjects in an experiment
who are exposed to the treatm
ent (independent variable)
Also called the experimental
condition
The group being studied and
compared to the control group
Control Group
Are not exposed to the
independent variable
Results are compared to those
of the experimental group
Also called the control
condition
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Types of Experimental Research

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 Randomized Controlled Trial
A randomized controlled trial is an experiment where the participants are rando
mly allocated to two or more groups to test a specific treatment or drug. Particip
ants are assigned to either an experimental group or a comparison group. Rand
om allocation means that all participants have the same chance of being placed
in either group. The experimental group receives a treatment or intervention, for
example:
– Diagnostic Tests.
– Experimental medication.
– Interventional procedures.
– Screening programs. 8
Participants in the comparison group receive a placebo (a dummy treatment), an alternative
treatment, or no treatment at all. There are many randomization methods available. For exa
mple, simple random sampling, stratified random sampling or systematic random sampling.
 The common factor for all methods is that researchers, patients and other parties cannot tell
ahead of time who will be placed in which group.

Fig. : SUNY Downstate Medical Center. 2014 9

 Classical Design of Randomized Experiments

Pre-Test/Post-Test with Random Assignment to Intervention or Comparison Groups.

Measurement, Learning & Evaluation Project. 2013

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Form: https://www.urbanreproductivehealth.org/toolkits/measuring-success/types-evaluation-designs
 Advantages of Randomized Controlled Trials
Random allocation can cancel out population bias; it ensures
that any other possible causes for the experimental results are
split equally between groups.
Blinding is easy to include in this type of experiment.
Results from the experiment can be analyzed with statistical
tests and used to infer other possibilities, like the likelihood o
f the method working for all populations.
Participants are readily identifiable as members of a specific
population./li>
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 Disadvantages of Randomized Controlled Trials
Generally more expensive and more time consuming than other met
hods.
Very large sample sizes (over 5,000 participants) are often needed.
Random controlled trials cannot uncover causation/risk factors. For
example, ethical concerns would prevent a randomized controlled tri
al investigating the risk factors for smoking.
This type of experimental design is unsuitable for outcomes which t
ake a long time to develop. Cohort studies may be a more suitable al
ternative.
Some programs, for example cancer screening, are unsuited for rand
om allocation of participants (again, due to ethical concerns).
Volunteer bias can be an issue. 12
 Quasi-Experimental Design.
A quasi-experimental design has much the same components as
a regular experiment, but is missing one or more key componen
ts. The three key components of a traditional experiment are:
 Pre-post test design.
 Treatment and control groups.
 Random assignment of subjects to groups.

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Limitations of Quasi-Experimental Research
You may want or need to deliberately leave out one of these key components. T
his could be for ethical or methodological reasons. For example:
 It would be unethical to withhold treatment from a control group. This is usu
ally the case with life-threatening illness, like cancer.
 It would be unethical to treat patients; for example, you might want to find o
ut if a certain drug causes blindness.
 A regular experiment might be expensive and impossible to fund.
 An experiment could technically fail due to loss of participants, but potential
ly produce useful data.
 It might be logistically impossible to control for all variables  14
 These types of issues crop up frequently, leading to the widespread
acceptance of quasi-experimental designs — especially in the social sci
ences. Quasi-experimental designs are generally regarded as unreliable
and unscientific in the physical and biological sciences.

Some experiments naturally fall into groups. For example, you might
want to compare educational experiences of first, middle and last born
children. Random assignment isn’t possible, so these experiments are q
uasi-experimental by nature. Statistics how to. 2016
from: http://www.statisticshowto.com/experimental-design 15
 Classical Design of Quasi-Experimental.

Pre-Test/Post-Test with Non-Random Assignment to Intervention or Control Groups.

As with randomized experiments, for a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design, data are co
llected before and after the intervention.

Measurement, Learning & Evaluation Project. 2013

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Form: https://www.urbanreproductivehealth.org/toolkits/measuring-success/types-evaluation-designs
 Post-test Only Quasi-Experimental Design.

Post-Test Only with Non-Random Assignment. In some cases, data are not collected before the in
tervention.
Measurement, Learning & Evaluation Project. 2013
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Form: https://www.urbanreproductivehealth.org/toolkits/measuring-success/types-evaluation-designs
Non-experimental design of Quasi-Experimental.

Measurement, Learning & Evaluation Project. 2013 18

Form: https://www.urbanreproductivehealth.org/toolkits/measuring-success/types-evaluation-designs
 Examples of Quasi-Experimental.
The general form of a quasi-experimental design thesis statement is “What effec
t does (a certain intervention or program) have on a (specific population)”?
Example 1 : Does smoking during pregnancy leads to low birth weight?
It would be unethical to randomly assign one group of mothers packs of cigarett
es to smoke. The researcher instead asks the mothers if they smoked during pre
gnancy and assigns them to groups after the fact.
Example 2 : Does thoughtfully designed software improve learning outcomes f
or students? This study used a pre-post test design and multiple classrooms to s
how how technology can be successfully implemented in schools.
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 Example Table and Results of Experimental Research

Title : A Randomized, Controlled Trial of ZMapp for Ebola Virus Infection.

Results
Frequentist results gave a mortality difference of −14 percentage points (95%
confidence interval [CI], −34 to 6) and a relative risk of 0.60 (95% CI, 0.29 to 1.24).
The PREVAIL II Writing Group, for the Multi-National PREVAIL II Study Team. 2016.
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N Engl J Med 2016; 375:1448-1456October 13, 2016.
 The difference between Randomized controlled trial
and Quasi-experiment
 A true experiment(Randomized controlled trial) has one main component -
randomly assigned groups. This translates to every participant having an equ
al chance of being in the experimental group, where they are subject to a ma
nipulation, or the control group, where they are not manipulated.
 A quasi-experiment is simply defined as not a true experiment. Since the m
ain component of a true experiment is randomly assigned groups, this means
a quasi-experiment does not have randomly assigned groups. Why are rando
mly assigned groups so important since they are the only difference between
quasi-experimental and true experimental?
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Q&A
Thank you
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