Experimental Designs Discussion Literature & Language Essay (Essay Sample)

Experimental Designs Discussion
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Experimental Designs Discussion
Experimental research is common in most scientific studies. It involves studying the effect of the systematic manipulation of one variable over another (Wiersma & Jurs, 2009). The manipulated variable is called the experimental treatment, while the observed and measured variable is called the dependent (Wiersma & Jurs, 2009). The best approach to select subjects in experiential research is to control as many confounding variables as possible in order to eliminate or reduce errors in the assumptions that will be made.
In the research by Michael H. Newlin, Maria J. Lavooy, Alvin Y. Wang titled “An Experimental Comparison of Conventional and Web-based Instructional Formats”, a true experimental design is used without a pretest. In the study, groups were created randomly, with the conventional teaching cluster being the control group, and the web-synchronous and web-asynchronous instructional formats being the experimental set. In this case, the subjects of each group were assigned at random. Post-tests were then administered to each subject to determine if a difference between the three groups exists. This study, therefore, used the true experimental design, which despite being the best approach, lacks a pretest measure. This fact means that it is difficult to determine if the difference apparent at the end of the study is an actual change from the possible variance at the beginning of the study.