nonequivalent-groups design

a quasi-experimental design in which the responses of a treatment group and a control group are compared on measures collected at the beginning and end of the research. In psychology and other social sciences, these designs often involve self-selection, in which the members of the treatment group are those who volunteer or otherwise seek the treatment whereas the comparison group members do not. Since participants are not assigned to conditions at random, the two groups are likely to exhibit preexisting differences on both measured and unmeasured factors that must be taken into account during statistical analyses. Also called nonequivalent comparison-group design; nonequivalent control-group design.

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Psychology term of the day

January 22nd 2025

auscultation

n. a diagnostic method in which the examiner listens for sounds within the body either with the aid of a stethoscope (mediate auscultation) or directly by laying the ear on the surface of the body (immediate auscultation).