Review
Book Description
This long awaited successor of the original Cook/Campbell Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings represents updates in the field over the last two decades. The book covers four major topics in field experimentation:
- Theoretical matters: Experimentation, causation, and validity;
- Quasi-experimental design: Regression discontinuity designs, interrupted time series designs, quasi-experimental designs that use both pretests and control groups, and other designs.
- Randomized experiments: Logic and design issues, and practical problems involving ethics, recruitment, assignment, treatment implementation, and attrition.
- Generalized causal inference: A grounded theory of generalized causal inference, along with methods for implementing that theory in single and multiple studies.
- The final chapter critically reflects on the assumptions and key issues covered in the previous four sections.
The emphasis on the generalized causal inferences is a significant extension of the work done in previous volumes; and the addition of theoretical and practical chapters on randomized experiments will be of great use to researchers who use randomization in their research practice. At the same time, this book retains and expands the emphasis on quasi-experimentation that was the hallmark of Cook and Campbell; and it retains Campbell's classic theoretical and conceptual approach to experimentation that has been so successful over the last 35 years.
