MODULE 3 ALTERNATIVES TO EXPERIMENTATION: NON-EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS

Nonexperimental approaches

Nonexperimental approaches

• are used in situations in which an experiment is not practical or desirable.

• used whenever testing a hypothesis in an existing real-life situation is necessary or important.

• used to study behaviors in natural settings (children playing, chimps parenting, or life in a gang) to explore unique or rare occurrences (a case of multiple personalities, a presidential election) or to sample personal information (attitudes, opinions, and preferences).

• can provide useful data, either from single individuals or from large groups of people, it is important to understand how they are applied in psychological research.

Describing Research Activities

1. degree of manipulation of antecedent conditions

2. degree of constraint on subjects’ responses/ The degree of imposition of units

The degree of manipulation of antecedent conditions

theoretically varies from low to high, from letting things happen as they will to setting up carefully controlled conditions.

• Selecting a high degree of manipulation has its pros and cons

The degree of imposition of units

is an equally important dimension. This term refers to the extent to which the researcher constrains, or limits, the responses a subject may contribute to the data.

External validity

How well do the findings of an experiment generalize or apply to people and settings that were not tested directly.

Internal validity

The certainty that the changes in behavior observed across treatment conditions were actually caused by differences in treatments.

Phenomenology

• A non-experimental method of gathering data by attending to and describing one’s own immediate experience.

• precludes experimental manipulation.

• Personal experience as a source of data.

• describes, but cannot explain, behavior.

• can be a useful source of information that may lead us to formulate hypotheses, but experimentation is still required to determine which antecedent conditions produce the behavior or experience.

Case study

• The descriptive record of an individual’s experiences, behaviors, or both is kept by an outside observer.

• a record may be produced by systematically recording

  experiences and behaviors as they have occurred over time

• and employed extensively in forensic psychology and organizational psychology.

Five Major Purposes of Case Study

1. They are a source of inferences, hypotheses, and theories.

2. They are a source for developing therapy techniques.

3. They allow the study of rare phenomena.

4. They provide exceptions, or counterinstances, to accepted ideas, theories, or practices.

5. They have persuasive and motivational value.

Deviant case analysis

A form of case study in which deviant individuals are compared with those who are not to identify the significant differences between them.

Retrospective data

Data collected in the present based on recollections of past events; apt to be inaccurate because of faulty memory, bias, mood, and situation.

Usefulness of Case Study

1. to make inferences about the impact of life events, the origin of disorders, or developmental processes.

2. be able to devise more appropriate treatment techniques, as well as preventive measures.

3. perfect forum for investigating unique cases or rare problems

4. can provide evidence that casts doubt on theories or generally accepted practices.

5. sometimes a dramatic way to illustrate abstract concepts.

6. used in clinical work to evaluate an individual’s overall level of psychological functioning.

Field study

• A non-experimental research method used in the field or in a real-life setting, typically employs a variety of techniques, including naturalistic observation and unobtrusive measures or survey tools, such as questionnaires and interviews.

• often combine various types of data gathering to capitalize on the richness and range of behavior found outside the laboratory. Antecedent conditions are not manipulated in field studies, but the degree of constraint on responses varies considerably from study to study.

Naturalistic observation

• A descriptive, non-experimental method of observing behaviors as they occur spontaneously in natural settings.

• involves no manipulation of antecedent conditions. Subjects’ responses are free to vary. Because the researcher imposes very few constraints.

• ften essential and even preferable to experimentation

Ethology

to study behavior in the wild as well as in captivity.

Systematic observation

A system for recording observations; each observation is recorded using specific rules or guidelines, so observations are more objective.

Unobtrusive measure

A procedure used to assess subjects’ behaviors without their knowledge; used to obtain more objective data.

Participant-observer study

A special kind of field observation in which the researcher actually becomes part of the group being studied.

Reactivity

The tendency of subjects to alter their behavior or responses when they are aware of an observer’s presence.

Archival study

• A descriptive method in which already existing records are reexamined for a new purpose.

• Vast amounts of data are collected by government and private agencies, hospitals, businesses, schools, institutes, and so on.

• Information about such things as crime and death rates, education levels, salaries, housing patterns, and disease rates are accessible to researchers.

Qualitative research

• relies on words rather than numbers for the data being collected. Instead of numbers, it uses self-reports, personal narratives, and expression of ideas, memories, feelings, and thoughts.

• These are phenomena that qualitative researchers choose to study within a rich background or unique environment.

• use methods of empirical phenomenology to gather data. Empirical phenomenology relies on the researcher’s own experiences or experiential data provided by others.

• is used to study phenomena that are contextual, meaning they cannot be understood without the context in which they appear.

Contemporary phenomenology

also called empirical phenomenology, might rely on the researcher’s own experiences or on experiential data provided by other sources.

Empirical phenomenology relies on one or more of the following sources of data:

1. The researcher’s self-reflection on experiences relevant to the phenomenon of interest.

2. Participants’ oral or written descriptions of their experiences of the phenomenon.

3. Accounts of the phenomenon obtained from literature, poetry, visual art, television, theatre, and previous phenomenological (and other) research.