A researcher desires to understand the effect of child abuse on an individual's personality and attitude. He forms two groups of participants for the study. The first group contains people who were abused during their childhood and the second group contains people who had normal childhood. This type of division of people based on actual differences rather than through random assignment is called _____ design.

Question

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The described division of participants into groups based on pre-existing differences (childhood abuse experience) is known as an ex post facto design. This is not a randomized design, as participants were not assigned randomly to groups. Ad lib design refers to a study that has no fixed protocol, and variable refers to the factors being measured in the study.

A Researcher Desires to Understand the Effect of Child Abuse