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The event does not necessarily culminate in the result every occasion (the change of the behaviour of every participant). A causal relation is established when the result occurs for the majority of the participants; in other words, the result occurs within a certain probability. The probability of the result of interest occurring is compared with a neutral controlled event.
This method is not under the strict control of the experimenter and, therefore, the confounding factors potentially influence the results. This type of design thus acknowledges a child’s development during the course of a study; such as their increase in intelligence, which assists with their ability to articulate their speech more precisely which culminates in greater social skills. The child’s development contributes to the result of the quasi-experiment, to such a large extent, that it is sometimes impossible to say whether the intervention had an effect. This is also called a problem of inner validity. In a hypothetical study, where the effect of a linguistic game platform used in a certain school is of interest, it may appear that it has a positive effect on the linguistic development of the children in that school. In order to reduce this inner validity problem, one could use a comparison group from a different school where this linguistic platform was not used. However, this is not a perfect solution either, because the children are not assigned into those groups randomly, and, therefore, the comparison group might have poorer linguistic skills at the end of the quasi-experiment due to other reasons.
Pros
Enables the researcher to study causality to some extent, when the study is carefully planned
Allows gathering extensive background information of the participants under study
Enables researchers to research a problem or phenomenon in its natural setting.
Cons
Participants are not randomly allocated to study groups.
Dependent variables are not under the control of the experimenter.
The development of children and unknown biases of a comparison group can be confounding factors
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CO:RE database: Testing Children and Adolescents’ Ability to Identify Fake News: A Combined Design of Quasi-Experiment and Group Discussions (Dumitru, 2020)
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CO:RE database: Features of Media Multitasking in School-Age Children (Soldatova et al., 2019)
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Enhancing perceived digital literacy skills and creative self-concept through gamified learning environments (Alt & Raichel, 2020)
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Alt, D., & Raichel, N. (2020). Enhancing perceived digital literacy skills and creative self-concept through gamified learning environments: Insights from a longitudinal study. International Journal of Educational Research, 101. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.IJER.2020.101561
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Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (1979). Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Rand McNally. https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/quasi-experimentation-design-and-analysis-issues-for-field-settin
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Dumitru, E.-A. (2020). Testing Children and Adolescents’ Ability to Identify Fake News: A Combined Design of Quasi-Experiment and Group Discussions. Societies 2020, Vol. 10, Page 71, 10(3), 71. https://doi.org/10.3390/SOC10030071
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Soldatova, G., Chigarkova, S., & Dreneva, A. (2019). Features of media multitasking in school-age children. Behavioral Sciences, 9(12). https://doi.org/10.3390/BS9120130
