This article extends the issues and arguments raised in Bernard, Abrami, Lou, and Borokhovski ("Distance Education", 25(2), 175-198, 2004) regarding the design of quantitative, particularly experimental research in distance education. A single experimental, study from the distance education literature is examined from six different perspectives to show the differences between preexperiments, true experiments, and quasi-experiments in terms of their impact on interpretability and generalizability (i.e., internal and external validity). Arguments for and against experimentation are discussed and the article ends with a description of meta-analysis, the quantitative synthesis of experimental research, and its potential for providing answers to questions that no single study can adequately address. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)