Counseling Research and Program Evaluation 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A counselor randomly assigns 60 clients to either a CBT group or a waitlist control group and compares anxiety scores afterward. What type of design is this?
- Quasi-experimental design
- Correlational design
- True experimental design (Correct answer)
- Ex post facto design
Correct answer: True experimental design
Random assignment to treatment and control conditions defines a true experimental design.
Question 2: What primarily distinguishes a quasi-experimental design from a true experiment?
- Absence of random assignment to groups (Correct answer)
- Absence of a dependent variable
- Use of qualitative data only
- Use of a single participant
Correct answer: Absence of random assignment to groups
Quasi-experiments compare groups, but participants are not randomly assigned, often because intact groups are used.
Question 3: Students selected for a study because of extremely low self-esteem scores show higher scores on retest even without intervention. Which threat to internal validity is most likely?
- Maturation
- Statistical regression (Correct answer)
- Instrumentation
- Diffusion of treatment
Correct answer: Statistical regression
Extreme scores tend to move toward the mean on retest, a phenomenon called statistical regression.
Question 4: A school counselor measures students' test anxiety before and after a workshop, with no comparison group. Which design is being used?
- Solomon four-group design
- Posttest-only control group design
- Nonequivalent control group design
- One-group pretest-posttest design (Correct answer)
Correct answer: One-group pretest-posttest design
A single group measured before and after treatment without a comparison group is a one-group pretest-posttest (pre-experimental) design.
Question 5: Participants in a workplace wellness study improve simply because they know they are being observed. This is called the:
- Hawthorne effect (Correct answer)
- John Henry effect
- Pygmalion effect
- Halo effect
Correct answer: Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect occurs when awareness of being studied changes participants' behavior.
Question 6: A counselor records a client's panic attacks during baseline, introduces treatment, withdraws it, and then reintroduces it. Which single-case design is this?
- AB design
- Multiple baseline design
- ABAB (reversal) design (Correct answer)
- Changing criterion design
Correct answer: ABAB (reversal) design
Alternating baseline and treatment phases twice is an ABAB reversal or withdrawal design.
Question 7: When withdrawing an effective treatment would be unethical, which single-case design is most appropriate?
- ABA design
- Multiple baseline design (Correct answer)
- ABAB design
- Alternating treatments with withdrawal
Correct answer: Multiple baseline design
A multiple baseline design staggers treatment across behaviors, settings, or people without requiring withdrawal.
