Experiments

What is the experimental group and control group?

The experimental group- the independent variable is manipulated in this group whereas it is kept constant in the control group.

reliability and lab experiments

Once the original study has been conducted other scientist can then replicate it-can repeat it in the exact same detail.

there are two reasons to why researchers are able to produce the same results:

1. The original experimenter can specify precisely what steps were followed in the original experiment so other researcher can repeat these in future

2. It’s a very detached method- the researcher merely manipulates the variables and records the results. The scientists personal feelings or opinions have no effect on the conduct or outcome of the experiment

Advantages of lab experiments

Can identify cause and effect relationships.meaning postivists may use this method.

What are the practical problems of lab experiment?

Society is a very complex phenomenon. In practice, it would be impossible to identify, let alone control all the variables that may play a part in a situation.

Cannot be used to study the past, since by definition it is impossible to control variables that were acting in the past rather than than present.

only study small samples, this makes it very difficult to study large scale social phenomenon such as religion or voting patterns, the small scale nature of lab experiments also reduces their representativeness.

What are the ethical problems?

Lack of informed consent- It is a law to gain informed consent but researchers may may find it difficult to obtain from groups such as children or vulnerable groups.

Deception- Genrally considered wrong to mislead people as to the nature of the study, E.g Milgrams.

Harm- the experiment may cause harm physically or psychologically.

What is the Hawthorne effect?

A laboratory is not a normal or natural environment. it is thus likely that any behaviour in these condition is also unnatural or artificial, If people do not behave natraully than the results produced will be invalid.

If people know they are being studied, they may behave differently for example may guess what the researcher is wanting them to do.

Free will and lab experiments

Interpretiivists argue that humans are fundamentally different from plants, rocks and other phenomenon studied by natural sciences, unlike the objects humans have free will.

This means our behaviour cannot be studied and explained in terms of cause and effect

What are field experiments?

They have two features that distinguish it from a laboratory experiment:

- It takes place in the subjects natural surrounding rather than in an artificial laboratory environment.

-Those involved are generally not aware that they are the subjects of an experiment, in which case there is no Hawthorne effect.

The researcher manipulates one or more of the varaiables in the situation to see what effect it has on unwitting subjects of the experiment

Evaluation- more natraul, valid results.

However the more realistic the less control they have over variables. Also ethical issues arise from field experiment.

What is the comparative method?

Carried out by the mind of the sociologist. It it a ‘thought experiment’ and it does not involve the researcher actually experimenting on real people at all. However, like lab and field experiments , its designed to establish a cause and effect relationship.

There is 2 steps:

-Step1- Identify two groups of people that are alike in all major respects expect for one variable we r interested in.

-step 2- Then compare the two groups to see if this one difference between them has any effect.

Example and evaluation of comparative methods?

• Durkheim study of suicide. Durkheim hypothesis was that low levels of integration of individuals into social groups caused high rates of suicide.

• He argued that Cathocalism produced higher levels of integration than protestants. From this he predicted that protestants had higher rates of suicide than catholics.

• He tested his prediction by comparing the suicide rates of catholics and protestants who were similar in all other important respects. His prediction was supported by official statistics.

Evaluation- avoids artificality, it can be used to study past events and no ethical problems.

Very little control over variables