ABSTRACT
The United States and other modern nations should be ready for an experimental approach to social reform. Removing reform administrators from the political spotlight seems both highly unlikely and undesirable even if it were possible. Political vulnerability from knowing outcomes is one of the most characteristic aspects of the situation that specific reforms are advocated as though they were certain to be successful. The interrupted time-series design as discussed so far is available for those settings in which no control group is possible, in which the total governmental unit has received the experimental treatment, the social reform measure. In the general program of quasi-experimental design, argue the great advantage of untreated comparison groups even where these cannot be assigned at random. Thus approaching quasi- experimental design from either improving the non-equivalent control-group design or from improving the interrupted time-series design, we arrive at the control series design.
