Word.ws English Dictionary

preexperiment

preexperiment adjective: before an experiment takes place.

Adjective

preexperiment (not comparable)

  1. Before an experiment takes place.

Noun

preexperiment (plural preexperiments)

  1. A simple form of research that examines a group or groups before and after an event, to see whether there is change, but does not employ a control group.
    • A study that uses only a manipulation is considered a pre-experiment. As the name implies, a pre-experiment has not quite achieved the level of control necessary to be termed an experiment at all.2016, Marina Krcmar, David R. Ewoldsen, Ascan Koerner, Communication Science Theory and Research
    • Campbell and Stanley describe three forms of preexperiments: the one-shot case study, the one-group pretest–posttest design, and the static-group comparison.2020, Earl R. Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, page 247

Forms of preexperiment

pluralpreexperiments

Origin of preexperiment

From pre- + experiment.

Questions about preexperiment

What does preexperiment mean?
Preexperiment means before an experiment takes place.
What part of speech is preexperiment?
Preexperiment can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near preexperiment in the dictionary

  1. preexisting condition
  2. preexisting conditions
  3. preexists
  4. preexpectation
  5. preexpectations
  6. preexperiment
  7. preexperimental
  8. preexperiments
  9. preexponent
  10. preexponential
  11. preexponents

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preexperiment (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “preexperiment.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preexperiment. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.