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The purpose of this paper is to report a field-based quasi-experimental study designed to examine the effectiveness of a transformational leadership intervention in remediating poor performance. The intervention was conducted on elements of the organization that senior management perceived as being low performing.

A quasi-experimental pre-test post-design was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the transformational leadership intervention. Pre-test data were collected four months prior to the intervention starting and the post-test data were collected eight months after the intervention had started. Follower perceptions of their leader's behavior and group cohesion, together with training outcome data were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention.

Results revealed that from pre-test to post-test changes in perceptions of leadership, group cohesion, and training outcome indicated that the intervention had beneficial effects. These beneficial effects were evidenced in one of two ways: desirable behaviors increased in the experimental group from pre-test to post-test while they remained the same or were decreased in the control group; or desirable behaviors remained the same in the experimental group while they decreased in the control group.

The current study is the first to utilize a quasi-experimental organization wide design to examine the efficacy of a transformational leadership intervention. Furthermore, the current study provides evidence that transformational leadership can buffer negative environmental effects.

This paper covers different types of research designs, like, longitudinal, cross-section and sequential design, experimental design (including factorial experimental design), and correlational design, with illustrative examples. This paper will help a scholar to know how choice of research design depends on a number of parameters, highlighted by author.

Regression discontinuity (RD) design is a sophisticated quasi-experimental approach used for inferring causal relationships and estimating treatment effects. This paper aims to educate human resource development (HRD) researchers and practitioners on the implementation of RD design as an ethical alternative for making causal claims about training interventions.

To demonstrate the key features of RD designs, a simulated data set was generated from actual pre-test and post-test diversity training scores of 276 participants from three organizations in the USA. Parametric and non-parametric analyses were conducted, and graphical presentations were produced.

This study found that RD design can be used for evaluating training interventions. The results of the simulated data set yielded statistically significant results for the treatment effects, showing a positive causal effect of the training intervention. The analyses found support for the use of RD models with retrospective training intervention data, eliminating ethical concerns from random group assignment. The results of the non-parametric model provided evidence of the plausibility of finding the right balance between precision of estimates and generalizable results, making it an alternative to experimental designs.

This study contributes to the HRD field by explicating the implementation of a sophisticated, statistical tool to strengthen causal claims, contributing to an evidence-based HRD approach to practice and providing the R syntax for replicating the analyses contained herein.

Despite the growing number of scholarly articles being published in HRD journals, very few have used experimental or quasi-experimental design approaches. Therefore, a very limited amount of research has been devoted to uncovering causal relationships.

Existing experimental and quasi-experimental results have demonstrated that both anticorruption initiatives that provide information and/or authority to the recipients of government programs – so-called “bottom-up” interventions – and initiatives that rely on government agencies for enforcement – “top-down” interventions – can be effective in some settings. Yet, in other instances, both forms of intervention have been found to be ineffective in combating corruption. These contrasting results strongly suggest that the effectiveness of both “top-down” and “bottom-up” anticorruption interventions is conditional on other factors. Unfortunately, the existing literature says little regarding the conditions conducive to the success of either forms of intervention. Assessing the conditional effects of anticorruption treatments poses substantial challenges for researchers – particularly for those employing experimental or quasi-experimental approaches. This chapter (1) discusses factors that may condition the effectiveness of both top-down and bottom-up interventions; (2) illustrates the difficulties in assessing these conditional relationships, with particular reference to experimental and quasi-experimental settings; and (3) suggests approaches that might mitigate these problems.

In school improvement studies, randomized experiments are rare. A special problem is the assignment to the experimental and control groups, taking into account the different starting conditions at the schools in terms of school improvement competencies. The purpose of this paper is to take the example of an intervention study conducted in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, the extent to which the challenges involved with a quasi-experimental design were addressed is examined.

The intervention study was conducted with 54 math teachers (experimental group: n=29; control group: n=25) and their grade 7 and 8 classes (n=1,054) at 13 secondary schools. It aimed to increase teacher cooperation on teaching for promotion of students’ self-regulated learning. T-tests, Mann-Whitney tests, ANOVA, multilevel regression analyses were conducted.

At the beginning of the intervention, the teachers in the two groups did not differ significantly in prior cooperation on teaching processes and in attitudes toward cooperation. However, they differed in prior cooperation on school framework conditions and teaching processes. The intervention was effective in increasing teachers’ cooperation intensity on instruction, and teachers’ attitude toward binding cooperation. However, teaching processes did not change depending on experimental or control group.

Teacher cooperation practice was assessed only by teachers’ self-report. No indicators on the quality of the cooperation among teachers were included.

The paper discusses the challenges and limitations of conducting intervention studies on school improvement. Implications for further research are given.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how quasi-experimental designs can be implemented in intervention studies on school improvement.

Work environment change from the traditional cell- and open-space offices to activity-based work (ABW) generates many concerns among workforce and management. The purpose of this study is to observe impacts of ABW change on several knowledge work performance drivers and outputs.

A quasi-experimental design was applied to distinguish the impact of ABW on several dimensions of knowledge work performance in three governmental organizations. The empirical measures that were observed in the study were: perceptions of physical environment, virtual environment and social environment, individual ways of working, well-being at work and self-assessed productivity.

Well-being at work or productivity will not collapse because of ABW change. Most of the facets of self-assessed productivity and all of the well-being facets did not change because of the adoption of ABW. ABW change had a positive impact on group work effectiveness but negative effect on perceptions of the facilities as conducive for efficient working. ABW change had an enhancing effect on the routine of protecting one’s concentration from software-induced interruptions and decreasing effect on using mobile technologies to work during idle times and using technology to avoid unnecessary traveling. ABW change made telework more acceptable.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was one the first studies following real-world change to ABW with quasi-experimental design. The difference-in-differences approach made it possible to isolate the causal impact of ABW change on the knowledge work performance drivers and outputs from other simultaneous changes taking place in the studied workplaces.

Tests of assumed mediation models are common in research in many disciplines, including managerial psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, organizational behavior, and organizational theory. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to detail experimental design options for conducting such tests in a manner that has the potential to yield results that have high levels of internal and construct validity.

The paper presents a logical analysis of strategies for testing mediation models so as to insure valid inferences about causal relations between variables.

The most appropriate strategy for testing assumed mediation models is research that uses randomized experimental designs.

Managers should base their actions on valid evidence about phenomena. More specifically, managerial actions should be predicated on research results that have high levels of internal, construct, and statistical conclusion validity. Thus, this paper encourages managers to base decisions about organizational policies and practices on well‐designed experimental research.

This paper addresses a number of points about issues involving internal and construct validity in tests of assumed causal models that have not been covered in previous work.

This chapter analyzes a geographic quasi-experiment embedded in a cluster-randomized experiment in Honduras. In the experiment, average treatment effects of conditional cash transfers on school enrollment and child labor were large – especially in the poorest experimental blocks – and could be generalized to a policy-relevant population given the original sample selection criteria. In contrast, the geographic quasi-experiment yielded point estimates that, for two of three dependent variables, were attenuated. A judicious policy analyst without access to the experimental results might have provided misleading advice based on the magnitude of point estimates. We assessed two main explanations for the difference in point estimates, related to external and internal validity.

Do LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) workshops result in improved experience of flow components as well as higher levels of creative output than traditional meetings (MEET)? This research studies the extent to which LSP, as a specialized material-mediated and process-oriented cocreative workshop setting, differs from MEET, a traditional workshop setting. Hypotheses for differences in individual flow components (autotelic behavior, happiness, balance), group flow components (equal participation, continuous communication) and creative output were developed and tested in a quasi-experimental comparison between LSP and MEET.

The study was conducted with 39 practitioners in six teams from various industries. In total, 164 observations were collected during two workshops using the Experience Sampling Method. The creative output was assessed by peer evaluations of all participants, followed by structural analysis and quantitative group comparisons.

The results show that two components of individual flow experience (autotelic behavior, happiness) were significantly higher in LSP, and one of the components of group flow experience (continuous communication) was, as expected, significantly lower. Regarding creative output, the LSP teams outperformed the MEET teams. The study suggests that a process-oriented setting that includes time for individuals to independently explore their ideas using a different kind of material in the presence of other participants has a significant influence on the team result.

LSP can improve the components of participants' flow experience to have an impact on the creative output of teams. In cocreative settings like LSP, teams benefit from a combination of alone time and high-quality collaborative activities using boundary objects and a clear process to share their ideas.

This is the first quasi-experimental study with management practitioners as participants to compare LSP with a traditional and widespread workshop approach in the context of flow experience and creative output.

In this chapter, we examined issues related to research design and research management as applied to scientific research conducted in applied school settings. In terms of research design, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have an important role to play in advancing a scientific agenda for school-based research. However, given their enormous cost and complexity, it is important to carefully time their implementation in the development cycle. We suggested that the use of RCTs is most appropriate in the later stages of the development cycle when the focus is on demonstrating the efficacy and/or effectiveness of an intervention and establishing its generalizability under the real world conditions of schooling. We also recommended establishing a hierarchy of evidence for an intervention that involves implementing a cost-efficient mix of single case, quasi-experimental, and true experimental designs where appropriate and feasible. In examining issues related to the management of research and the implementation of a knowledge development agenda for schools, it has become apparent that treatment integrity is a keystone variable. We discussed the importance of treatment integrity, with attention to the impact on internal and external validity. Finally, we offered practical considerations to support high-quality, respectful school-based inquiry.