Experimental research Flashcards
(16 cards)
What is the independent variable?
- Can be manipulated, changed or altered independently of any other variable
What is a experimental group?
Group of subjects exposed to the experimental treatment
What is a control group?
- Group of subject s not exposed to the experimental treatment, compared to the experimental group to determine any causal effects
what is external validity?
The ability of an experiment to generalise beyond the data of the experiment to other subjects or groups in the population under study.
What is internal validity?
Refers to whether an experimental treatment was the sole cause of observed changes in the dependent variable
what is the history effect?
- Caused by specific events in the external environment beyond the researchers control
Maturation effect
- Cause by subjects maturing or changing in some way that will affect the experiment results
Testing effect
- Known as pretesting effects
- Initial measurement alerts subjects to the nature of the experiment
Instrumentation effect
- Caused by a change in question wording, interviewers or procedures used to measure the dependent variable
Selection effect
- Sample bias that occurs from differential selection of respondents for the comparison groups
Mortality effect
- Caused by sample dropouts
- Completing one treatment but not another
Demand characteristics
Experimental design procedures or situational aspects of an experiment that provide unintentional hints about the experimenter’s hypothesis to subjects
Guinea pig effect
- Caused by subjects changing their normal behaviour or attitudes to cooperate with the experimenter
Hawthorne effect
- caused by subjects being aware that they are participants in an experiment
What are laboratory experiments?
Conducted in artifical settings over which the researcher has almost complete control.
What are field experiments?
Conducted in a natural setting where complete control of extraneous varibales are not possible
