Review
"...I received my book yesterday...thank you so much! I used the 1979 version a lot in my PhD program and am eagerly re-reading it. It's a great experimental design book and is excellent for explaining validity issues to students!"


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.


About the Author
William Shadish (Ph.D., 1978, Purdue University) is a professor of psychology at the University of Memphis. His recent research pertains to experimental design, meta-analysis, methodology, and program evaluation theory. In the past, he has done extensive research on long-term care for the chronically mentally ill. With his colleagues at the University of Memphis, Dr. Shadish has studied the psychology of science, both theoretically and empirically. Thomas D. Cook (Ph.D., 1967, Stanford University) is a professor of sociology, psychology, education and social policy, as well as a Faculty Fellow, Institute of Policy Research at Northwestern University. His major research interests include examining routes out of poverty and methodology, dealing with the design and execution of social experiments, methods for promoting causal generalization, and theories of evaluation practice. Dr. Cook has written or edited seven books and has published numerous articles and book chapters. He was the recipient of the Myrdal Prize for Science from the Evaluation Research Society in 1982 and the Donald Campbell Prize for Innovative Methodology from the Policy Sciences Organization in 1988. He is a trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and a member of its committee on the Future of Work.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.