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, inflexible, require specialist eqipment, require skilled researcher

ethical strengths of experiments

in lab experiments people are generally aware of experiments as they can have fully informed consentaz

ethical weaknesses of experiments

deception and often lack of fully informed consent

theoretical strengths of experiments

ecological calidity, field means reduced chance of hawthorne effect, positivists like quantatitive data, establish casue and ffect relationships, often repilcable, increase in internal validity, can control extraneous variables

theoretical weaknesses of experiments

extraneous variables, not very generalisable, lab experiments and the hawthorne effect, low validity if experimets are aware, lab experiments can have low ecological validity

what is an experiment?

experiments aim to measure the effect which an independent variable (the cause) has on the dependent variable (the effect)

4 key features of an experiment

control over variables, precise measurements, testing hypohesis, establishing cause and effect relationships

what are the two types of experiments

field and lab

what is a laboratory eperiment?

when the research takes place in an artificial setting and the variables are manipulatedby the researcher

What is a field experiment?

when the research. takes place in a natural setting but the researcher is manipulating the variables

independent variable

the variable we manipulate deliberatly, changing it to see what the effect is on the dependent variable

dependent variable

the variable that we have to meausre to see whether the independent variable has had an effect on it, to make the experiment fair, we need to control the variables that would impact the dependent variable unintentionally

extraneous variables

factors that could effect the dependent variable unintentionally if not controlled

confounding variable

fators that have affected the dependent variable unentionally

how does the extranous variable become confounding?

if it is not controlled

why do experiment groups exist?

compare an experiment group ro a control group to make sure that the independent variable is the factor causing the change in the dependent variable

What is the experiment group?

the group that is subject to the manipulated independent variable

What is the control group?

the group that the variables remain consistent in and would be givena placebo

Lab experiment: Bandura

Bandura was interested in studying he. effects of violent images in the media on the behaviour of children, in one of his experiments he divided a group of kids into 4 groups

Lab experiment: Milgram

participants in the study were instructed to administer electric shocks to a learner, even when that obedience aused harm to the learners

results of Milgram’s experiment

showed that he mjority of participants continued to administer shocks to the maximum level even when they believed the shocks were causing serious har

Why has Milgram’s study been criticised?

lacking ecological validity, cusing psyvhological distress, decieving participants

legacy of milgram’s study?

inspired numerous other studies on obedience and authorityb in the field of psychology