Describe (a) what methodological features experiments and quasi-experiments have in common and (b) how they differ. Why does this mean that only experimental approaches can result in conclusions about cause and effect?
What will be an ideal response?
Experiments and quasi-experiments both make use of discrete groups whose behaviors are compared to see if they differ. The designs of experiments and quasi-experiments look alike. In quasi-experiments, however, the investigators don't randomly assign participants to groups; rather, some characteristic of a participants determines group assignment. On the other hand, in experiments, researchers do assign participants to groups randomly. The lack of random assignment means that groups may differ in behavior because of factors other than the IV. Consequently, when the groups differ in quasi-experiments, we don't know if the difference is due to the IV or to some other characteristic common in one group but not the other.
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