Use of Quasi-Experimental Research Designs in Education Research: Growth, Promise, and Challenges

By M. Gopalan, K. Rosinger, J. Ahn. 2020

287 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the past few decades, we have seen a rapid proliferation in the use of quasi-experimental research designs in education research. This trend, stemming in part from the “credibility revolution” in the social sciences, particularly economics, is notable along with the increasing use of randomized controlled trials in the strive toward rigorous causal inference. The overarching purpose of this chapter is to explore and document the growth, applicability, promise, and limitations of quasi-experimental research designs in education research. We first provide an overview of widely used quasi-experimental research methods in this growing literature, with particular emphasis on articles from the top ranked education research journals, including those published by the American Educational Research Association. Next, we demonstrate the applicability and promise of these methods in enhancing our understanding of the causal effects of education policies and interventions using key examples and case studies culled from the extant literature across the pre-K–16 education spectrum. Finally, we explore the limitations of these methods and conclude with thoughts on how education researchers can adapt these innovative, interdisciplinary techniques to further our understanding of some of the most enduring questions in educational policy and practice.

Subfields: Education, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/398367815a7a10270071b1da4ee65b90583e3340

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. Santosh Mahapatra
2. K. Rosinger
3. Nicholas Voorhees
4. Justin C. Ortagus
5. Robert Kelchen

In Statistics and Probability

1. Santosh Mahapatra
2. K. Rosinger

Citations in the corpus

• Performance-Based Funding in American Higher Education: A Systematic Synthesis of the Intended and Unintended Consequences (2020, methodology): “To assess the strength of research designs, we first identified 20 articles that used a difference-indifferences (DD) design, the quasi-experimental method frequently used in the PBF literature to establish a causal relationship between the policy and various outcomes (Gopalan et al., 2020).”
• Impact of ChatGPT on ESL students’ academic writing skills: a mixed methods intervention study (2024, methodology): “Since the study aimed to assess the impact of ChatGPT as a feedback tool and involved an intervention, a quasi-experimental design was an automatic choice for such a study, as with intervention studies in education (Gopalan et al., 2020).”