Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Maturation

The maturation effect is defined as when any biological or psychological process within an individual that occurs with the passage of time has an impact on research findings. When a study focuses on people, maturation is likely to threaten the internal validity of findings. Internal validity is concerned with correctly concluding that an independent variable and not some extraneous variable is responsible for a change in the dependent variable.

Over time, people change and these maturity processes can affect findings. Most participants can, over time, improve their performance regardless of treatment. This can apply to many types of studies in the physical or social sciences, psychology, management, education, and many other fields of study.

Maturation Effects and Internal Validity

A number of maturation effects can occur during a short period of time, even within a few hours or days. How participants respond between pre- and post-data collection can change as a result of a good or bad mood at the time. Influences such as tiredness, boredom, hunger, and inattention can impact response. A participant may have had little rest prior to the data collection of a project, causing tiredness, or may be preoccupied by other responsibilities, causing inattention. These participant-based influences can be difficult to control and reduce the internal validity of findings.

Maturation effects that occur over the longer term include factors such as influences resulting from getting older, becoming better educated, changes in economic situations, and so forth. For example, participants who experience changes in their work expectations or in their financial status may respond differently irrespective of the intervention (independent variable) of the study. With particular populations, such as very young people or elderly people, small changes in age or situation can markedly impact physical, social, behavioral, and psychological response.

The issue to be questioned in a study is how confident one can be that the study can identify the observed changes in the dependent variable that are due to the treatment (i.e., intervention) and not due to maturation. Experimental design enables a researcher to be more confident that maturation is not responsible for change in the dependent variable. A simple experimental design can address maturation.

R  O  X  O

R  O   O

The R represents participants randomly assigned to the treatment and control groups. The O represents the observation or measurement of the dependent variable. This design is used to achieve comparability with reasonable confidence that extraneous variables, such as maturation, are evenly distributed over both groups and controlled in this sense.

See also Experimental Designs; Internal Validity; Random Assignment; Threats to Research Validity

Frederick Burrack
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781506326139.n417
10.4135/9781506326139.n417

Further Readings

Campbell, D., & Stanley, J. (1963). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Chicago, IL: Rand-McNally.
Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (1979). Quasi-experimentation: Design and analysis issues for field settings. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Gall, M. D., Borg, W. R., & Gall, J. P. (2003). Quantitative research design. In Educational research: An introduction (
7th ed.
), pp. 287–431). White Plains, NY: Longman.
  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution