Book chapters - Selecting a study design

8 important questions on Book chapters - Selecting a study design

How can study designs used in quantitative studies be classified?

  1. The amount of contact with the study population
  2. the reference period of study
  3. the nature of the investigation

How can designs be classified into three groups based on the number of contacts?

  1. Cross-sectional studies
  2. before-and-after studies
  3. longitudinal studies

What is a longitudinal study?

The study population is visited a number of times at regular intervals, usually over a long period, to collect the required information.

These intervals are not fixed so their length may vary from study to study. Irrespective of the size of the interval, the informaiton gathered each time is identical.
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How can study design be classified on the basis of the nature of the investigation?

  1. Experimental
  2. Non-experimental
  3. Quasi- or semi-experimental

What is an experimental study?

In studying causality, when a researcher or someone else introduced the intervention that is assumed to be the cause of change and waits until it has produced - or has been given sufficient time to produce - the change.

In experimental studies a researcher starts with the cause and waits to observe its effects.

Cause --> effect

What is a semi/quasi-experimental study?

Studies which have the attributes of both experimental and non-experimental studies.

What are controlled experiments?

In a control experiment the study population is divided into two groups, one experimental and the other control.

The control group does not receive any stimulus or intervention whereas the experimental is exposed to it.

The intervention or stimulus is either introduced by the researcher or someone else.

What is th after-only design?

The researcher knows that a population is being, or has been, exposed to an intervention and wishes to study its impact on the population.

In this design, baseline information is usually constructed either on the basis of respondents recall of the situation before the intervention, or from information available in existing records.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

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