Maturation Threats
A maturation threat results from the fact that the research
participants are growing older, more experienced, wiser, more skillful,
etc. between the pretest and the posttest, and this may be causing the
observed effect rather than the treatment that is being studied. For example,
if you give a group of third graders a special math program and observe
that their math skills improve between the pretest and the posttest, this
difference may be caused by the fact that the children have grown older
and are simply better able to understand math concepts.
How do you think a comparison group can alleviate this threat to internal
validity?
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Copyright © 1997 Wendy
Martin. All rights reserved.