Lab Experiments Flashcards
(35 cards)
who favours lab experiments
Positivists
why do positivists favour lab experiments
It achieves their main goal of reliability. It allows them to have careful control over experimental conditions which produces reliable data because it allows other researchers to replicate the experiment. It allows the researcher to identify and measure behaviour patterns quantitatively and to manipulate variables to establish a cause and effect relationship
why do positivists not favour lab experiments sometimes
It is often impossible or unethical to control the variables
Their small scale means that results may not be representative or generalisable, positivists sometimes use the comparative method for this reason
why do interpretivists reject lab experiments
It fails to achieve their main goal of validity. It is an artificial situation producing unnatural behaviour. Interpretivists favour more naturalistic field experiments, but positivists criticise this method for giving us less control over variables
features of lab experiments
Control
Cause and effect
Control - Lab Exp
A lab experiment is a controlled experiment, held in an artificial environment in which the scientist can control different variables in order to discover what effect they have. In this way, the scientist can test hypotheses about the cause of a phenomenon.
groups the people to be researched are divided into
The experimental group - they are exposed to a variable called the independent variable that the researcher believes may have a particular effect
The control group - they are not exposed to the independent variable - their conditions are kept constant
cause and effect
allows us to predict what will happen under the same conditions in the future
practical issues
Open systems
Individuals are complex
Studying the past
small samples
Hawthorne Effects - theoretical issues as it threatens validity
The expectancy effect
open systems
Keat and Urry argue that lab experiments are only suitable for studying closed systems where the researcher can control and measure all the relevant variables and make precise predictions. However, society is an open system where countless factors are at work in any given situation, interacting with each other in complex ways. This makes it impossible for the researcher even to identify, let alone control, all the relevant variables. This makes lab experiments unsuitable for studying social phenomena.
studying the past
Lab experiments cannot be used to study an event in the past, since we cannot control variables that were acting in the past. Nor can we keep people in lab conditions for long time periods so we can study them.
small samples
Lab experiments can only study small samples. This makes it difficult to investigate large-scale social phenomena. Small samples also bring the risk that a result that appears to show one variable causing another, may in fact just be a chance correlation between the two.
Hawthorne effect
A lab experiment is an artificial environment and any behaviour that occurs in it may also be artificial. If the subject know they’re being experimented on, this may make them act differently, they may try to guess what the researcher wants them to do and act accordingly. This will ruin the experiment.
expectancy effect
This is a form of experimental bias. It refers to the fact that what a researcher expects to happen in the experiment can affect its actual outcome. This can occur by the experimenter consciously or unconsciously treating the subjects in a way that influences how they respond and produces the result the experimenter expected.
ethical issues
informed consent
harm to subjects
deception
informed consent
Sometimes explaining the aim of the experiment beforehand will be self-defeating. In these cases, for the experiment to work, the subjects must be deceived because if they know its true purpose it may reduce the authenticity of the research by creating the Hawthorne Effect.
deception
it is wrong to mislead people as to the nature of the experiment as Milgrim did in his study of obedience to authority. Milgram lied to his research participants about the purpose of the research, telling them they were assisting in an experiment on learning, they were ordered by the researcher to administer electric shocks when the learner failed to answer questions correctly. In reality, the purpose of the experiment was to test people’s willingness to obey orders to inflict pain. Young people may be unable to understand what is happening meaning that there are greater problems of deception
harm
the experiment can also harm victims
theoretical issues
Reliability and hypothesis testing
Representativeness
Internal Validity
Interpretivism and free will
Reliability and hypothesis testing
Positivists see reliability as important because it enables us to check the work of other researchers by repeating them. If we can repeat the research and arrive at the same results, we can have more confidence that the original findings are true.
reasons why positivists regard lab experiments as highly reliable
The original experimenter can control the conditions and specify the precise steps that were followed in the original experiment, so others can easily repeat these steps to re-run it
It produces quantitative data, so the results of the re-run experiments can be easily compared to the original
It is a very detached and objective method, the researcher merely manipulates the variables and records the results. Their subjective feelings and values have no effect on the conduct of outcome of the experiment
why are lab experiments good for hypothesis testing
Lab experiments can isolate and control any variable that is of interest to the researcher, they are also an effective way to test hypotheses and predictions. If we believe a particular variable is the cause of a phenomenon, we simply set up an experiment where the experimental group is exposed to that variable and a control group is not, and then compare the outcomes.
representativeness
For positivists, representativeness is important because they aim to make generalisations about how the wider social structures shape individuals behaviour. However, it lacks external validity
types of validity affecting lab experiments
Internal and External Validity