Quasi-experimental designs are applied in a wide range of social and behavioral sciences including in the fields of economics, education, medicine, public health, sociology, and so much more. Below are detailed examples of real-life applications of this design:

Example 1

Exploring the effect of a new marketing choice A company may want to test the impact of adopting a new marketing strategy on sales of the company. The researcher would conduct a quasi-experimental design to get reliable results crucial for decision-making. So, in this situation, the company would implement this design by: Selecting one group of customers based on factors such as purchasing methods and history and using the new marketing strategy on them while using the old strategies on a different group of customers. The company can then use the new sales digits to compare with the old numbers to gauge the effectiveness of the new marketing strategy.

Example 2

Evaluating the effectiveness of new treatment procedures A hospital may want to research if a new treatment method is working on their patients. They would expose some patients to a new treatment method while using the same old one on a different set of patients. They would then check the differences and trends in the results to know the effectiveness of the treatment.

Example 3

Assess the effects of big social interventions such as recessions on the economy In the field of economics and social sciences, a researcher may want to know the impact of interventions, for instance, wars or recessions on the economy. Conducting a real experiment in this situation would be impractical, so the researcher would use a quasi-experimental design. The most suitable type of quasi-experimental design for this situation would be the interrupted time series design.