Natural Experiment and Observational Study Objective: To explain the difference between and observational and an experimental study. What Is Naturalistic Observation? Definition and Examples Request PDF | Online Social Interactions: A Natural Experiment on Word of Mouth Versus Observational Learning | Consumers' purchase decisions can be influenced by others' opinions, i.e., word . Natural Experiments: An Overview of Methods, Approaches, and ... They still assert a hypothesis, observe variables and may notice a cause and its effect, but they do not introduce the cause themselves. Observational vs. experimental studies causal effects. The Natural Experiment can be replaced with expression Observational Study in some context. Surveys are performed when the research is of descriptive nature, whereas in the case of experiments are conducted in experimental research. A natural experiment is a type of experiment where use is made of some naturally occurring independent variable (gender for example). Section 1.2: Observational Studies versus Designed Experiments 1) Observational Study: A study in which the researcher merely observes what is happening or what has happened in the past and tries to draw conclusion based on these observations. tutor2u | Natural Experiments Behar and Cain discuss both types of studies, data collection, and data analysis. Naturalistic observation is used to observe people in their natural setting, participant observation involves becoming an active member of the group being observed, structured observation involves coding a small number of behaviors in a quantitative manner, case studies are typically used to collect in-depth.