Causal Comparative Research Design

1.0 Introduction
Researchers probe into many questions such as why some
undergraduates are better in writing and other are not? or what is the
effect of colored packaging on children likeness of products? these
questions can be answered through experimental researches however
when we consider the attributes variables such as motivation, parental
ignorance, gender, ethnicity, religion, self-esteem, habits, disabilities etc.
we cannot simply perform experiments to identify the causes or effects.
These constructs can be tested through non-experimental methods
because they pre-exist in participant and cannot be manipulated or
controlled. When an investigation involves such type of variables the
researcher then turn to causal comparative research.
Causal Comparative research is at times considered as a descriptive type
of study, exploratory in nature, as it described the condition that already
exists and further attempts to identify the reasons and antecedents for
the investigated effect or phenomena (educ research). The research is
also known as ex post facto a Latin word after the fact because both the
effect and apparent cause have already occurred (Chandra), the research
has emerged from the methodology given by John Stuart Mill as
Identification of cause and effect; he states that if a particular
phenomenon is preceded by two or more occurrences of the same
situation alone then the situation is a cause of the examined phenomena.
For example if five students are planning to opt for marathon race
however, only two showed up and rest of them were unwell, the doctor
examines the reason by asking about what food they had last night, if all
of the three says that they have eaten an apple pie then the cause of
illness will be apple pie as it is constant in all the occurrences (SS
Chandra)
This research is ideally applied in psychology, medical, educational and
social research context because it contemplates the variable that cannot
be manipulated due to the practical or ethical concerns (Article 1) or when
experiences are occurred previously (article 4) for example child abuse or
if a researcher wants to determine effects of a particular drug on a disease
especially when members cannot be subjected to experimentation, it can
be identified through causal-comparative by comparing a drug consuming
group with non-consumers; (article 1). (Research in Education By S.S.
Chandra, R.K. Sharma) These Investigations that are not only based on
exploring the phenomena of a certain situation but also attempts to
identify why and how it occurs, then the aim of the researcher is to
compare the similarities and contrasts among the occurrences and to
signify the factors or conditions that contributes to that consequences or
practices.
(Article 7) discusses the most prominent author Kelinger (1970, he
formally defines ex-post facto research as when the researcher
retrospectively establishes the causal link relationship between the pre
occurred independent variable towards the dependent variable; thus

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observes the effects of a naturally occurring event on a subsequent
outcome. Interestingly, some examples of ex post facto designs are also
termed as reverse experiment which is for instance selecting groups,
applying treatments to bring out the differences in the dependent
variable, in contrast the causal-comparative initiates with groups with
preexisting differences and searches in review for the reason that can be
the root for differences. Spector (1993:42) proposes that the causal
comparative research is a process that is anticipated to transmute a
research based on non-experimental designs to a quasi- experimental
form. For instance, a child is felonious i.e. indulging in criminal activities, then to
determine the basic cause behind crime, the researcher would try to identify the events and
scenarios that might have contributed to this behavior. The expected antecedents for this
behavior can be lack of self-control, parental problems, school environment, discipline issues
or anti-socialization attitude. Here the researcher predicts the causes of consequences thus
arises a possibility for the testing to be performed in a controlled environment for stronger
causations. (Article 8) Therefore, the causal-comparative research can be defined as empirical
examination with researchers no direct control on the independent variables effecting
dependent variable which can no more be manipulated determining the pre-existing causative
conditions among and between groups.

1.1 Types of Causal Comparative Research

Causal comparative researches can be classified into two types:
Retrospective causal comparative (retroactive)
Prospective Causal comparative (proactive)
The retrospective causal comparative research initiates with the effects or
consequences and investigates the possible causes behind those effects;
therefore there is pre-existing dependent variable and hypothesis will be
developed for possible independent variables. For example if a researcher
want to identify why town A has more obese people then in town B? Then
the research would be to identify the causes of obesity in respective
towns. In contrast prospective research initiates with the causes and
identifies the potential effects, the hypothesis will be developed for
possible dependent variable based on pre-existing independent variables.
For example what are the possible consequences of smoking cigarettes in
an open environment?
The retrospective research is more preferred and applied then
prospective, especially in education and business fields.

1.2 What Causal-Comparative is not?

Often causal comparative research is confused with correlational and
experimental researches, whereby there are many difference in concepts
and application of these researches. It is observed that many authors do
state that correlational is a type of ex post facto but it is not. Therefore,
there is a need of clear explanation about the differences between each
type of researches to avoid confusions and overlapping while preparing a
research design.

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1.2.1

Causal Comparative and Correlational

Both causal comparative and correlation researches belongs to nonexperimental research designs, the confusion between these methods are
due to the lack of control of independent and dependent variables in
experimental environment. In addition both the studies are applied to
evaluate the situation the occurred previously. By logic there are many
difference among these designs such as the causal-comparative research
considers categorical or nominal variables, in contrast correlational
studies have scaled or continuous variables. Correlational study has one
group with two or more variables and identifies the correlation or
reciprocity among variables; casual comparative has two or more groups
with one variable and performs comparisons among groups instead.

1.2.2

Causal Comparative and Experimental

Experimental and causal comparative research shares similarity because

these designs perform the comparison among groups and identify cause
and effect relationship between the independent and dependent variable.
While the major difference between these two designs are as follows:
In experimental researches the causes are created intentionally to
identify the effect of those causes across the groups. In comparison
when the effects or causes are already created for example credit
card usage then causal comparative research is appropriate to
probe into the situation to justify the reasons or consequences.
The groups can randomly formed in the experimental study with the
researchers decision about who will get what, however in causal
comparative the groups already exists with the presence or absence
of certain condition or situation.
The independent variable can be manipulated or controlled in
experimental studies for example teaching methodology may vary
from group to group to identify the consequences, whereby the
variable manipulation is not possible in causal comparative, as the
variable has already been occurred or manipulation is ethically or
practically not possible. For example if a researcher is interested to
identify the effects of prenatal care towards the development of the
child, it is not practically possible to gather a group of mothers and
perform an experiment, due to ethical and legal limitations therefore
causal comparative research will help to identify the differences.
Experimental studies are costly and only applied when there is a
strong evidence that the study will provide prolific knowledge to the
situation, causal comparative research can be less costly and many
times provides a probable grounds to conduct experimental studies
for example if a school is planning to deploy handheld devices to
improve students reading and pronunciations can go for causal
comparative research or experiments. The experiment is costly
because the researcher has to purchase the equipment and deploy
the solution for at least one group, however the researcher may opt
for causal comparative in case if any other school has already
deployed this solution comparisons can be performed among the

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schools with and without the technology, if the students
performance is improved then the solution can be considered for
experiments; if no differences are observed on the students
performance than there is no need to spend time, cost and money in
this experiment.

1.3 Post hoc Fallacy

Experimental studies provide strong grounds for inferences and causation,
however causal comparative research might fall into the trap of fallacy for
example if a researcher is finding the reason for criminal behavior of a ten
year old kid he/she identifies it to be peer influences, although the main
reason could be parental ignorance or broken family, therefore in such
situations the researched would be tempted to conclude this reasons, in
order to avoid such fallacies the conclusions must be drawn based on
three conditions
1. Associative variations: If X is independent and Y is dependent
variable, a statistical relationship is established between the two
variables, i.e. change in one is predicted by the change in other
variable.
2. Systematic order: The statistical relationship is not sufficient enough
to make conclusions, there is a need to observe the timeline that X
will only cause Y, if X occurred before Y. this can be confirmed
through reverse causality.
3. Absence of other causes: Any other factors besides X are not
determining Y, before drawing conclusions researcher need to
assess what other factors might have contributed towards Y other
than X, in addition what effect other variable will have on X and Y
relationship, in case if in presence of extra variables the X and Y
relationship holds then the conclusions can be drawn about the
causal relationship but if extra variable is influencing both and
modifying the causal link then the relationship between X and Y is
termed as spurious relationship. For example as we have discussed
about criminal behavior due to peer influence, in this case the
parental ignorance influences the causal link therefore weakens the
conclusions about the causation between criminal behavior and
peer influence.

1.3.1

Reverse Causality

In order to avoid the fallacy the researcher may attempt to reverse the
causal relationship and hypothesize that Y causes X rather than X causes
Y; the reverse causality will not hold when second condition of causal
comparative research is true that if X precedes Y on timeline. In contrast,
if the reverse causality is possible then it will help to identify the presence
of other influencing variables. For example if a researcher is attempting to
establish relationship between self-esteem and academic achievement,
the reverse causality will hold because it cannot be determined of self
esteem comes before achievement or post achievement, furthermore
when groups with or without achievement will be tested for self esteem,

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this construct may vary across the members of each group thus indicating
a misjudgment of the causal relationship.

2.0 Steps of Causal Comparative Research

Causal comparative research design is quantitative in nature it identifies
causal relationship between categorical variables; the independent
variable cannot be manipulated, but there are control procedures and
statistical tests that can be applied to conform the conditions avoiding the
fallacies.
1. Topic Selection: In causal comparative research the researcher is
interested to study the causes of the experience or situations occurred
in the real world, as he/she recognizes that epistemology of the cause
or effect of the occurrence might impact the future behaviors and
adding value to the existing body of knowledge. This leads to
statement of the research problem in form of a question that is then
converted into expected hypothesis; for example what is the effect of
size of school on academic achievement?
2. Identification of Variables: Literature review precisely helps on this step
as the researcher has to identify the extraneous variables that might
influence the causation more than the independent variable, in addition
literature provides guidance in operationalizing the independent and
dependent variables for the study.Forexampleliteraturecanhelpinidentifying
thedimensionformeasuringthesizeofschool(no.ofstudents,teachers,coveredarea,
no.ofclassroomsetc)andacademicperformance.
3. Hypothesis:Hypothesis in causal comparative researches are developed
in similar was as experimental research the statement is developed by
discussing the impact of independent variable towards the dependent
variable; for example students studying in large size schools achieve
better grades. the process of creating hypothesis may lead to errors

because of misjudgments about the independent variable cause for

the dependent variables therefore the researcher needs to apply
reverse causation and control procedures to eliminate the fallacies
in research (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007).
4. Incausalcomparativeresearchtheparticipantsarealreadydividedintogroupsthese
groupsaretermedacomparisongroups;thesegroupsareselectedasonegrouppossess
certaincharacteristicthatothergroupdoesnothave,howevertheparticipantforeach
groupmustonlydifferbasedontheindependentvariablesothateffectoferroneous
variablesmaybeavoidedfor example if we consider the school size to be
independent variable now create two groups large size school and
small size school. The definition of the school size can be
operationalized literature review; now categorize the population of
schools in small and large; caution is needed while categorizing that
schools should not only be divided according to number students but
other factors must be considered such as student teacher ratio,

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number of classrooms etc.
5. The participants are selected based on any applicable sampling
technique as well as different methods can be applied to determine the
sample size for each group. For example random sampling technique
can be used to select schools in each group.
6. Instrument selection: the instrument for research can be developed or
adopted from the literature, the questions in causal comparative
researches are categorical, the dependent variable can be evaluated
through any test for example academic performances can be evaluated
through annual results or percentages.

2.1 Control Procedures

Lack of manipulation, control or randomization in causal comparative
research opens a room for weaknesses in research; since the independent
variable groups already exists and are pre-treated with situations this
raises the possibility that the groups may not only differ from each other
due to independent variables but also some extraneous factors creates
subdivision in groups, which may be the real cause of observed difference.
For example if a researcher studied the effect of pre-school education on
coloring abilities of Kindergarten child, the conclusion may be drawn that
pre-school education does effect the coloring abilities of a kindergarten,
but what if the region in which this study is conducted all pre-schools are
private and have a high standard of education or may be the families
living in that region do send their children for tuitions, then the researcher
will have to control this variable of study and compare the groups not only
based on attending pre-schools but within the group of attenders further
testing can be done for extra tuitions or may be on income levels of
students family.
Matching is another control technique to be applied on extraneous
variable, such as if a researcher has identified a variable that could be
related or affecting dependent variable other than the independent
variable the researcher can perform matching procedure among groups
i.e. the members of groups can be selected only when their extraneous
variables score match to reduce the fallacy in conclusions. For example of
a researcher wants to identify the impact of self concept of academic
performance, the IQ level of a student may create biasness; therefore low
self concept and high self concept group members are selected if all have
a specific IQ level (IQ=140) or a range of IQ level to reduce its effect on
the dependent variable. The members not having the same IQ will be
eliminated from the groups.
Homogeneous groups can be further divided into subgroups of control
variables, this technique not only helps the researcher to control the
extraneous variable but also allows to check the effect of independent
variable on the dependent variable with the varying levels of control
variable. For example if the students are selected based on range of IQ
level (70 to 140), then the number of participants can be increased per

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group, moreover each group can be further subdivided on low, medium
and high IQ for better assessment of effects and better conclusions. Factor
analysis of variance a statistical technique can be applied to identify the
interaction effect of independent and dependent variable with control
variable in subgroups and in combination.
ANCOVA or analysis of covariance, this statistical techniques allows the
researched to equate the groups on one or more variables; it adjusts the
scores of control or extraneous variables on dependent variable for
example if study is about two different learning methodologies the groups
may covary on IQ level thus ANCOVA will equate scores by adjusting the
means of dependent variables across groups on the measurement of
effectiveness of learning methodology.

2.2 Data Analysis and techniques

The data analysis is performed through various statistical tests that are
also applied in experimental studies. The data analysis initiates with the
descriptive statistics such as mean, that measures the average value for
the studied variable with associated standard deviations indicating the
spread of the data if standard deviation is high the data is scattered and
low standard deviation indicated closer to the mean value. Statistical
inferences are done through t-tests and ANOVA to identify the significant
differences between the mean of two or more groups, chi square test of
independence is used to compare the frequencies to compare if an event
occurs frequently in one group then other.

2.3 Validity
Internal validity of the research cannot be established because the causal
link between independent and dependent variable may be weakened by
extraneous variables which are not considered while doing a research like
if the researcher is interested to identify the effects of prenatal care on
child development there might be other factors such as genetics, mothers
health, stress related issues that can influence this relationship therefore
causal comparative studies lacks in internal validity, the control
procedures may be applied but they are restricted to one or two
extraneous variables restricting internal validity which is stronger in case
of experimental researches. External validity can be established in this
research design by drawing large samples that are representative of the
population, and using random sample technique, if not possible then
samples must be cautiously selected to match the demographics and
psychographics characteristics as much as possible.

3.0 Example
Barnum et. Al conducted a study about online courses effectiveness
towards the perception of learning and analysis of students interaction.

Causal Comparative Research Design

This study employed two research designs: causal comparative and
correlational research; the objective of online courses and perceived
learning was tested by causal comparative research method. The study
selected 28 online courses, and was offered to 527 graduates out of them
348 volunteered to participate 32.9% were males and 67.1% were females
with different ethnic backgrounds; total 19 were sampled from 28 due to
low registrations in 9 courses. The online courses belonged to the
disciplines of education and leadership with the teaching duration of 16
weeks. Control procedures were applied by keeping e-learning method,
online support and offered by same university. The data was collected
during final three week in form of surveys concerning perceived learning
through online systems. ANCOVA treatment was applied to control the
variation of extraneous variables; Chi square, and t-test were applied to
analyze the causal comparative hypothesis. Results of the study showed
that significant difference existed between courses and the perceived
learning of students suggesting that quality assurance is needed on the
online teaching methodologies; moreover female had an opinion that they
have learned more through online system then their male colleague.