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I found this week's lectures and readings to be very interesting. I had never considered before how new treatments are tested so it was cool to see the usage of the comparison model. I don't think I ever thought about how new treatments can still be created and tested. My undergraduate professors always stressed the importance of reliability and validity so the other powerpoint was mostly review for myself. I did have one question though:

Are all experiments required to have a pre-experimental / pilot study?

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Once again, this weeks lecture was very informative and the videos that followed. External and Internal validity are very important when doing research and for researchers. Validity is so important when doing research because we would not know what causes what without validity and results cannot be generalized. From the lectures it is clear that one of the most crucial things to consider while conducting research is validity. The one question that I have is which validity is better than the other, external or internal?

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I would like clarification of how Pilot Studies fit into Pre-experimental Designs (One-Shot Case Study, One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design, and Posttest Only with Nonequivalent Groups).
I'm thinking there can there be a Pilot Study for any of the three common Pre-experimental Designs. For example, a Pilot Study for a One-Shot Case Study.

Lastly, I find the One-Shot Case Study label confusing because I always thought "case studies" involved only individuals, not groups of people.

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This week's materials were super helpful in clarifying a study design. I found the videos to be helpful in reiterating the text and power-points. The explanation on how sampling tactics and length of time relate to but also vary from the design itself was very helpful as that often confuses me.

I kept going back to the fact that even though there are things to assist in mediating the threats to internal and external validity, so much of social work/mental health is subjective - there is no "one size fits all" for any diagnosis, etc. so even if you control variables and threats to the best of your ability, there's always that unknown of subjectivity when you're dealing with people -- do you think that factors in to why social work is still viewed as a profession that is "less than" - because research can never really prove anything? I feel like that sounds negative, but I hope you get what I mean by that!

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This week's lecture and reading were interesting. It helped a great deal in clarifying study designs. External and internal validity can be very helpful with research. Are pilot studies and pre-experimental study required for all experiments?

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This week’s readings and lectures were interesting but also overwhelming with all the new information. I was not familiar with any of experimental designs and hope to better understand them as the semester continues. I also didn’t acknowledge the various ways validity could be threatened especially externally. Since there are so many, is there a simple way to try to avoid or ensure that a study is not faced by any of the threats?

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Is it better to have a similar research design to other studies if we believe they had a strong basis, or is it better to do something completely different from previous research studies?

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The course materials from this week were helpful when evaluating different types of validity can shape one's research. This information will be helpful when finishing the literature review and starting the methods section.

Research Question: What factors should be considered when establishing a research method/design if it's similar but not quite parallel to a present article?

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Do these types of studies impact literatures review in a significant way? Would we want to limit the amount we use?

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Question: Is a randomized controlled trial only used in quantitative research? If so why is that?

I found that the lectures and reading were helpful in describing the specific types of experimental designs. The videos are especially helpful like the example of the car, and the web at the end of an other video that helps determine the study design. I find the difference between experimental and quasi-experimental design interesting as both definitions appear similar in language. I guess another question I have is, is the difference between the two the lack of random assignment. Or is the difference between the two controlling the threats to validity? Some of this is confusing for me as there is similar wording in both definitions.

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This weeks lectures were very interesting and informative. It helped better understand the studies done in the articles I used in my Literature Review. I now comprehend the importance validity has when doing research, because it allows us to understand the overall results. It also gave me a better understanding of the designs of the studies in the articles I have read.

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This weeks material had me thinking a lot about how my research question is morphing as I go about reading material for my literature review. I've been thinking a lot about internal validity from what I am learning about child sexual abuse to the effects and differences of confounding factors such as concurrent or add on traumas throughout the life span. But also external validity in findings from studies examining the relationship between CSA and later adverse consequences into adulthood that could possibly be applied to individuals who experience different chronic childhood traumas. I would be interested in learning about measurement tools that assist in isolating the effects of one particular independent variable when confounding variables may be present.