This article reviews the origins and use of the terms quasi-experiment and natural experiment. It demonstrates how the terms conflate whether variation in the independent variable of interest falls short of random with whether researchers find, rather than intervene to create, that variation. Using the lens of assignment--the process driving…

We describe an activity that introduces school-aged children to clinical trials, that presents the terminology associated with randomized controlled trials, and that reveals how the findings from clinical trials are applicable to everyone everywhere.