Control Group
The group in an experiment that does not receive the treatment, providing a baseline against which effects are measured.
A control group experiences everything the treatment group does except the intervention itself. Any outcome difference between the groups can then be attributed to the treatment rather than to time, testing, or attention. Variants include no-treatment controls, placebo controls, and active controls that receive a standard alternative, each answering a slightly different comparative question.
In a thesis, the choice of control condition shapes what your results mean: beating a no-treatment control shows the intervention does something, while beating an active control shows it does more than existing practice. Describe the control condition as precisely as the treatment, since an underspecified control is a common source of examiner questions about what the comparison actually demonstrates.
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