Evaluating Design Choice and Threats to Validity in a Quasi-Experimental Design Provide a 3-paragraph evaluation of the choice of design and threats to validity in a quasi-experimental design. Your response should include an evaluation of the choice of design, the author's rationale for the design choice, the types of validity presented and the critical differences among them, the author's performance in explaining them, and how you would assess the study's validity and the information you would require to do so.

Evaluating Design Choice and Threats to Validity in a Quasi-Experimental Design Provide a 3-paragraph evaluation of the choice of design and threats to validity in a quasi-experimental design. Your response should include an evaluation of the choice of design, the author's rationale for the design choice, the types of validity presented and the critical differences among them, the author's performance in explaining them, and how you would assess the study's validity and the information you would require to do so.
Required Resources


Course Text: Research Methods in the Social Sciences

Chapter 5, `Research Designs: Experiments`
Chapter 6, `Research Designs: Cross-Sectional and Quasi-Experimental Designs`

Chapter 5 wil be used in this week's Application. Chapter 6 presents a number of designs common to research in the social sciences when an experimental design is not appropriate. This resource will be used in this week's Discussion and Application.
Course Text: Using SPSS for Windows and Macintosh: Analyzing and Understanding Data

Lesson 9, `Printing and Exiting an SPSS Data File`
Lesson 10, `Exporting and Importing SPSS Data`
Lesson 12, `Finding Values, Variables, and Cases`
Lesson 14, `Sorting, Transposing, and Ranking Data`

Lessons 9, 10, 12, and 14 demonstrate different useful techniques for using and manipulating data in SPSS and printing and exiting the program. These lessons will be used in the SPSS Practice this week.
Sample data files to accompany the course text Using SPSS for Windows and Macintosh: Analyzing and Understanding Data
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/salkind/#sam

Lesson 9 Data File 1
Teacher Scale Results
Crab Scale Results

These data files will be used with the SPSS Practice activity.
Handout: Research Articles (Word document)

This handout provides articles that demonstrate quasi-experimental designs chosen by your program that you will use for this week's Discussion. Locate your program within the document to find the article you should use.
Software: SPSS
Article: Marques, S., & Lima, M. L. (2011). Living in grey areas: Industrial activity and psychological health. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 31(4), 314-322. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.12.002

Research Toolkit

Readings

Course Text: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

Chapter 3, `Writing Clearly and Concisely`
Chapter 4, `The Mechanics of Style`
Chapter 6, `Crediting Sources`
Chapter 7, `Reference Examples`