Given Hapunda

99 Non-Experimental Designs Non-experimental designs are types of evaluation designs that do not involve the use of treatment or intervention, and control or comparison groups. These are non-intervention designs that are descriptive in nature as they just describe and analyse the subjects and the situation in which they are found without any manipulation or intervention (Coolican, 2014). They are used to answer descriptive questions. The non- experimental designs do not attempt to create two equivalent groups (study or treatment and control groups). Thus, they do not make any effort to assign participants randomly to intervention or experimental and control or comparison groups. To that effect, non-experimental designs are suitable for description of the relationship between a programme or intervention and its effects. They examine the characteristics, frequency and associations. With non-experimental research designs, the evaluator can use designs such as longitudinal study designs, cross-sectional study designs and case study designs. These designs allow the evaluators to choose the sample and when to sample (Morra-Imas & Rist, 2009). Longitudinal Study Designs The longitudinal study design is the form of non-experimental designs that permits evaluators to make repeated observations or measures of the same variables of the same group of people over an extended period of time. In this design, participants are studied at several points over a long period of time in order to see the changes in the variables over time (Creswell, 2014; Morra-Imas & Rist, 2009). For example, an intervention or programme might be introduced to examine gender attitudes towards the use of contraceptives among students at a particular University. Thus, these designs allow evaluators take multiple measures over an extended period of time. Advantages and Disadvantages of Longitudinal Study Designs Longitudinal designs permit researchers to make repeated observations of the same variables of people with the same characteristics over long periods of time. The longitudinal observational designs are Focus Box 10: A Pretest-Posttest Comparison-Group Design An evaluation was conducted by Harris & Franklin (2009) on the effectiveness of a life skills group intervention aimed at improving attendance and grades of teenage mothers at a named high school. 19 participants were assigned to either the intervention or comparison group. The researchers then collected records of attendance and class grades at pretest and later at posttest. The results revealed that students in the intervention group had better attendance as well as better grades than those in the comparison group.