Reference no: EM132463468

Give me your feedback on this topic of discussion! Do you agree or disagree or what would do different?

Quasi-experimental designs offer some control, as participants are not randomly assigned to groups (Malec & Newman, 2013). The Nonequivalent Pretest-Posttest Control-Group Design (hereafter NEGD) would fit with the study that this student has been focused and fixated on the past couple of weeks. The research questions this student has focused on is, "why do people believe in the paranormal phenomena of ghosts and haunting?"

To employ the NEGD in the previously mentioned research question, Group A and Group B will be given a fabricated article that portrays a ghostly haunting of a location. Group A will be comprised of all believers in the ghosts and haunting phenomena, and Group B will be comprised of all skeptics in the ghosts and haunting phenomena. Group A will be given an intervention that the story is fabricated, and all activity was scientifically debunked, and Group B will not. The goal is to see if the intervention influenced the beliefs of the participants or not. Group A will be the independent variable, and the participant's response will be the dependent variable.

To change the study to make it a true experiment using pretest-posttest control group design, Group A and Group B will be a random mix of both believers and skeptics of paranormal phenomena. Group A will then be exposed to the same intervention, as stated before, while Group B will not.

An advantage of using true experimental design over a quasi-experimental design is true experimental design offers a higher degree of control. It increases the internal validity of a study more like a clear cause-and-effect relationship between independent and dependent variables can be determined.

In some cases, it is not possible to control every key factor of the experiment as research would do in a true experiment; therefore, in cases as such, the quasi-experimental design is preferred over a true experimental design.