Question

Compare and contrast the similarities and differences of experimental and non-experimental research designs. Include a description of the specific study designs for both types.

Answer 1

In an experimental design, a researcher is able to control the variables and define a cause-and-effect relationship between the variables. There are many types of experimental designs like Between Subjects Design, Within Subject Design, Pretest-Posttest Design, control group, etc.

WITHIN SUBJECT

A within-subject design is a type of experimental design in which all of the participants are exposed to every single variable or condition in the experiment. It is sometimes called as repeated measures design because each set of participants are tested more than once and their scores are compared. Example: In this experiment participants (P) are tested to get 3 responses each of each of the 4-testing condition.

	Cooperative Behavior	Non-Cooperative Behavior
Violent Video Games	P1 P2 P3	P1 P2 P3
Non-Violent Video Games	P1 P2 P3	P1 P2 P3

In a non-experimental design, a researcher cannot control the variables and is unable to define a cause-and-effect relationship between them. This type of design includes single variable design, correlational design, survey research design, etc.

CORRELATIONAL DESIGN

In this type of research design, the researcher measures the two variables of his/her interest and tries to assess the relationship between them. In this design, there is little to no attempt is done in the controlling extraneous and confounding variables. In this the study is conducted to assess the strengths and weaknesses of relationship between variables without any outside intervention. In these studies, there are independent and dependent variables, but the independent variable is not manipulated by the researcher. A research or a study in which a correlation is attempted to be found between bullying and depression in middle-school children is an example of Correlational Design.

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN	NON-EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Manipulation of variables is possible	Manipulation of variable is not possible
Cause-and-effect relationship can be established	Cause-and-effect relationship cannot be established
Extraneous and confounding variables can be reduced or controlled	Extraneous and confounding variables cannot be reduced or controlled

Similarity between them is that both use independent and dependent variables in their designs. Both designs also seek to find the relationship between these variables. Both of these methods seek to find correlation between variables by incorporating the study by comparison and contrasting of these variables and their effects on each other.