At present, various research designs are used conduct studies. Experimental research design refers to the scientific and the systematic approach to research where a researcher is capable of manipulating one or several variables. In addition, the researcher is capable of controlling and measuring the changes that may be present in other variables ( Ward, Furber, Tierney, & Swallow, 2013) . For the research design to be used, three conditions need to be present. They include the presence of a time priority in a causal relationship, the presence of consistency in a causal relationship, and the presence of a great magnitude of correlation. There are three major categories of experimental research design. They include quasi-experimental designs, true experimental designs, and pre-experimental designs. In nursing, the experimental research design can be utilized in the study of various ailments. For instance, it can be utilized in the study of diabetes mellitus. One of the studies in which it has been used is in the evaluation of the impact of cycling for 20 minutes on the blood sugar levels of male students in senior high school ( Azhar & Sutopo, 2017. According to the authors of the study, many school children in Indonesia do not check their blood sugar levels and have little knowledge concerning the prevention of the ailment. Hence, there was the need to determine how cycling would affect blood sugars of senior students. The study conducted was a quasi-experimental. It should be noted that this category involves the estimation of a causal effect of an intervention without the utilization of random assignment. As it is indicated in the methodology section, only one group was used during the pretest as well as the posttest period. Data was gathered by taking levels of blood sugar levels before and after the intervention. From this information, it is seen that this was the major variable which would be manipulated by the cycling speed as well as the distance covered by the participants.
Non-experimental research is the type of study in which a researcher is not capable of controlling, manipulating, or changing the predictor subjects or variables. Instead, he or she is required to depend on the elements of observation, interpretation or interactions to get to a conclusion ( Reio Jr, 2016) . In other words, a researcher should depend on correlations, case studies or surveys, and is not capable of demonstrating a cause-and-effect relationship. The research design tends to possess a great level of external validity, hence showing that it can be generalized to a greater population. In nursing, the non-experimental research design can be applied to an ailment such as AIDS. An example of this study was conducted to study the link between scientific knowledge and behaviors. According to the researchers, there is a great body of knowledge that shows that a rise in HIV/AIDS-related knowledge results in the adaptation of safe behavioral practices ( Mnguni, Abrie, & Ebersohn, 2016) . Hence, they investigated the relationship between academic HIV knowledge, functional HIV knowledge, and self-reported behavioral preferences of several students from various schools. A non-experimental survey design was utilized during the collection of data. Data was collected using questionnaires that had a total of thirty questions which were categorized into three sections. The analysis of the results was carried out using the SPSS software. From the experiment, it is evident that it was not possible to control or manipulate the variables. Instead, the authors used observation as well as interpretation of the SPSS results to make sure that they made conclusions of the study.
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References
Azhar, E. H., & Sutopo, A. S. (2017, March). Effect of Cycling 20 Minutes of Blood Sugar Levels in Male Students of Senior High School 9 Tangerang 2015. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 180, No. 1, p. 012260). IOP Publishing.
Mnguni, L., Abrie, M., & Ebersohn, L. (2016). The relationship between scientific knowledge and behavior: An HIV/AIDS case. Journal of Biological Education , 50 (2), 147-159.
Reio Jr, T. G. (2016). Nonexperimental research: strengths, weaknesses and issues of precision. European Journal of Training and Development , 40 (8/9), 676-690.
Ward, D. J., Furber, C., Tierney, S., & Swallow, V. (2013). Using Framework Analysis in nursing research: a worked example. Journal of advanced nursing , 69 (11), 2423-2431.
