studies which are not possible in laboratory settings, s/he may go to the field or the natural setting where the particular phenomenon actually exists. In other words, s/he may conduct a field experiment . For example, a researcher may want to know which method would lead to better learning among students—lecture or demonstration method. For this, a researcher may prefer to conduct an experiment in the school.
The researcher may select two groups of participants; teach one group by demonstration method and another group by the normal teaching method for sometime. S/ he may compare their performance at the end of the learning session. In such types of experiments, the control over relevant variables is less than what we find in laboratory experiments. Also, it is more time- consuming and expensive.
Many variables cannot be manipulated in the laboratory settings. For example, if you want to study the effect of an earthquake on children who lost their parents, you cannot create this condition artificially in the laboratory. In such situations, the researcher adopts the method of quasi (the Latin word meaning “as if”) experimentation . In such types of experiments, the independent variable is selected rather than varied or manipulated by the experimenter.
For example, in the experimental group we can have children who lost their parents in the earthquake and in the control group children who experienced the earthquake but did not lose their parents. Thus, a quasi experiment attempts to manipulate an independent variable in a natural setting using naturally occurring groups to form experimental and control groups. Correlational Research In psychological research, we often wish to determine the relationship between two variables for prediction purposes. For example, you may be interested in knowing whether “the amount of study time” is related to the “student’s academic achievement”.
This question is different from the one which experimental method seeks to answer in the sense that here you do not manipulate the amount of study time and examine its impact on achievement. Rather, you simply find out the relationship between the two variables to determine whether they are associated, or