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6.5: Key Terms/Glossary

  • Page ID
    76214
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    • Control group: one group in an experimental study that is not administered the treatment
    • Cross-sectional study: study in which observations are taken at a single point in time
    • Descriptive: descriptive research builds upon exploratory research to provide further information about a phenomenon and may also contain information about relationships between variables
    • Experimental design: an experimental design can help determine the effect of the independent variable or the treatment on the dependent variable or the outcome because the treatment can be isolated as the likely cause
    • Experimental group: one group in an experimental study that is administered the treatment
    • Explanatory: explanatory research seeks to explain “why” an outcome occurs
    • Exploratory: exploratory research seeks to understand an issue, trying to figure out what is going on
    • Longitudinal study: studies in which observations are taken at multiple points in time, often over a specified length of time
    • Nonexperimental design: designs that are not experimental due to lack of random assignment, control group, or the ability to manipulate the treatment
    • Non-probabilistic sampling: sampling technique that does not utilize probability to place cases into a sample
    • Population: all cases that could be a part of the study
    • Primary source: original data collected by researcher
    • Probabilistic sampling: sampling technique that utilizes probability to place cases into a sample
    • Random assignment: the placement of cases into control and experimental groups in an unbiased manner such that the likelihood of any case being placed into groups is exactly the same.
    • Representativeness: characteristic of a sample to reflect what the population of interest looks like
    • Research design: an action plan that guides researchers in providing evidence to support their theory
    • Sample: a selection of cases from the population
    • Secondary source: existing source of data that has been collected by other researchers
    • Treatment: the cause of an outcome and is able to be manipulated the be researcher in an experiment

    This page titled 6.5: Key Terms/Glossary is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Josue Franco, Charlotte Lee, Kau Vue, Dino Bozonelos, Masahiro Omae, & Steven Cauchon (ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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