RESEARCH METHODS - EXPERIMENTS

What are the strengths of field experiments?

observed in a natural environment so there is less chance of the Hawthorne effect and higher in ecological validity

What are the limitations in regards to variables of field experiments?

extraneous variables means that you an’t control all outside factors, but this does make it more realistic

What are the limitations in regards to money of field experiments?

the cost of monitoring the subjects is increased as specific equipment is needed to record subject behaviours

What are the limitations in regards to ethical issues of field experiments?

likely to incur deception and informed consent

What is the Hawthorne effect?

behaving differently as you are aware that you being studied

What is ecological validity?

setting in the experiment mirrors that of real life

Why do sociologists often not use experiments?

tricky to control variable, hard to predict social variables, don’t ascertain feelings, interested in peoples real-life social behaviour so experiments may not be the best method, don’t work well with larger populations

Why is the Hawthorne effect bad?

won’t be that natural (undermines validity), human agency means that its very difficult to imagine a sufficiently controlled environemnt for a sociological study

practical strengths of experiments

quantative data is easy to analyse

practical weaknesses of experiments

time consuming, expensive, requires researcher presence