Sociology Index

PRE-EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

Pre-experimental design is a research design which does not fit the standards of an
authentic experiment. Pre-experimental design is usually undertaken for exploratory
purposes. Typical of pre-experimental design is the elimination of a control group, thus it is
often called a single-group experiment. Pre-experimental design will not allow definitive
conclusions about the causes of the effect observed.

Where two groups did not represent real samples and neither random choice nor
a randomisation were intended, this method is called a pre-experimental design according
to the system conceived by Campbell and Stanley (Schwarz 1970). A pre-experimental
design has little control over environmental factors that could affect the outcome of a
study.

Pre-experiments are a simple form of research design. In a pre-experiment either a single

group or multiple groups are observed subsequent to some agent that's presumed
to cause change.

Types of Pre-Experimental Design

One-shot case study design
One-group pretest-posttest design
Static-group comparison

Validity of Results
An important drawback of pre-experimental designs is that they are subject to numerous
threats to their validity. It is often difficult or impossible to dismiss rival hypotheses or
explanations. Researchers must exercise extreme caution in interpreting and generalizing
the results from pre-experimental studies.

A reason that it is often difficult to assess the validity of studies that employ a pre-
experimental design is that they very often do not include any control or comparison group.
Even when pre-experimental designs identify a comparison group, it is still difficult to
dismiss rival hypotheses for the observed change.

Advantages
As exploratory approaches, pre-experimental designs afford a cost-effective way to discern
whether a potential explanation is worthy of further investigation.

Disadvantages
pre-experimental designs offer few advantages since it is often difficult or impossible to rule
out alternative explanations. The nearly insurmountable threats to their validity are clearly
the most important disadvantage of pre-experimental research designs.