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CHAPTER 10: Quasi-Experimental Designs and Program Evaluation 313FIGURE 10.1As a social experiment, Sesame Street was designed to improve the education ofhundreds of thousands of children.Experimental research is an effective tool for solving problems and answeringpractical questions. Nevertheless, two major obstacles often arise when wetry to carry out experiments in natural settings. The first problem is obtainingpermission to do the research from individuals in positions of authority. Unlessthey believe that the research will be useful, school board presidents andgovernment and business leaders are unlikely to support research financiallyor otherwise. The second, and often more pressing, obstacle to doing experimentsin natural settings is the problem of access to participants. This problemcan prove especially troublesome if participants are to be randomly assigned toeither a treatment group or a comparison group.Random assignment to conditions appears unfair at first—after all, randomassignment requires that a potentially beneficial treatment be withheld fromsome participants. Suppose that a new approach to the teaching of foreignlanguages was to be tested at your college or university. Suppose furtherthat, when you went to register for your next semester’s classes, you weretold that you would be randomly assigned to one of two sections taught atthe time you selected—one section involving the old method and one involvingthe new method. How would you react? Your knowledge of researchmethods tells you that the two methods must be administered to comparablegroups of students and that random assignment is the best way to ensure