Field Experiments

What type of research are field experiments?

primary quantitative

Who prefers field experiments?

Positivists

What type of data do field experiments produce?

quantitative

What is an example of a field experiment?

Rosenthal and Jacobson- Pygmalion in the classroom, streaming and teacher expectations

What are the practical strengths of field experiments?

• Key variables can be controlled, e.g. age of respondents

• Easy to test hypothesis (impact of teacher expectations on pupil performance)

• Low costs (conducted in Jacobson’s school)

What are the practical limitations of field experiments?

• Less control over external variables- e.g. researcher cant control what the teacher says to the pupil, how they are going to respond to labelling, natural intelligence and any additional support

• Hard to gain access to closed environments, e.g. a school

What are the ethical strengths of field experiments?

• Confidentiality- identities of participants are kept secret

What are the ethical limitations of field experiments?

• Lack of informed consent- respondents often cant opt out and dont know they are being monitored (pupils were unaware but teachers and parents gave consent)

• Vulnerable groups- long-term testing could have long-term psychological impacts (children were tested on for over a year)

What are the theoretical strengths of field experiments?

• Repeatable- the experiment can be set in similar conditions, e.g. you could repeat the experiment in multiple schools (repeated in 450 schools across the USA)

• Comparable- quantitative so results can be compared easily (all teachers may not react in the same way)

• Reduced Hawthorne Effect- participants are unaware they are being monitored, increases accuracy of findings

• Natural Environment- increased authenticity of findings

What are the theoretical limitations of field experiments?

• Lack of meaning- no understanding of why people behave that way (no discussion with the children about how they felt about the teachers view of them)

• Limited application- can only be applied to a small number of social situations

• Unrepresentative- lack of geographical distribution, small sample size, similar backgrounds of respondents, limited cross section used- unable to make generalisations (only one classroom in each school)