Topic 2 Flashcards
(25 cards)
What are the 3 types of experiments?
Laboratory (isolated variables), field (everyday situations), and the comparative method (comparisons made on similar groups).
What do laboratory experiments involve?
An experimental group (changes made) and a control group (kept constant).
What is an Independent variable?
Deliberately manipulated by the researcher in an attempt to change the participant’s behaviour on the dependent variable.
What is the Dependent variable?
The variable that the researcher assumes will be affected by the independent variable.
What is the Control variable?
What is kept the same to establish a cause and effect relationship.
What is a Hypothesis?
A testable statement.
What are some advantages of experiments?
Highly replicable- exact steps can be specified and it is detached.
What are some disadvantages of experiments?
Impossible to control all variables in society.
Can’t be used to study the past.
Only study small samples- unrepresentative.
Ethical- difficult to obtain consent or fully inform.
Ethical- can cause harm to participants (i.e. Milgram).
Artificial behaviour in a lab, so the Hawthorne effect may take place.
What is the Hawthorne effect?
If people know they are being studied, they will act differently.
What are some theoretical considerations?
Positivists favour the principle of laboratory experiments as it achieves their main aim of reliability, but recognise the disadvantages.
Interpretivists argue people have free will so are different from scientific studies and so behaviour can’t be explained in terms of cause and effect relationships. They reject laboratory experiments which aren’t valid, and favour more natural field experiments.
How can field experiments be criticised?
Field experiments are unethical as they involve carrying out an experiment on their subjects without knowledge or consent.
What is the comparative method?
It is carried out in the mind of the sociologist, without real people. The researcher identifies two groups who are very similar other than in the variable they’re interested in. The researcher then compares the two groups to see if this one difference between them has any effect.
How did Durkheim use the comparative method?
He studied suicide and hypothesised that low levels of social integrations caused high levels of suicide, and Catholicism produces higher levels than Protestantism. He then compared their suicide rates of the 2 similar groups and found that his prediction was supported by official statistics.
What are the advantages of the comparative method?
It avoids artificiality.
It can be used to study past events.
it poses no ethical problems such as harming or deceiving subjects.
What are the disadvantages of the comparative method?
The researcher has less control over variables than field experiments.
How can experiments be used in education?
Teacher expectations, classroom interaction, labelling and pupils’ self-concepts.
What are the ethical effects of laboratory experiments?
Harvey didn’t use real pupils so the children didn’t suffer any negative effects.
However, others (Charkin) used real pupils which means there are greater problems of deception, lack of informed consent and psychological damage due to their vulnerability and limited ability to understand.
This is why laboratory experiments only play a small role in educational research.
What are the effects of laboratory experiments having a narrow focus?
They only examine one aspect so the variable can be isolated more easily.
However, the teacher expectations are not seen in the wider process of labelling and self fulfilling prophecy. Charkin identified their body language but not how this affected pupils’ performance.
What are the effects of laboratory experiments being artificial?
They tell little about real world education e.g. Charkin used university students rather than teachers when they may not behave in the same way as experienced teachers and Harvey used photographs rather than real pupils, when the expectations may be based on more than appearance.
Which type of experiments do sociologists tend to use?
Field experiments in real educational settings.
What are the ethical effects of field experiments?
They pose major ethical problems e.g. the remaining 80% in ‘Pygmalion in the classroom’ may have been held back educationally, so it is unlikely that the same experiment would be carried out now.
The teachers need to be unaware/ deceived, i.e. if they had known the true nature of the IQ test then they may not have taken part.
What are the effects of reliability of field experiments?
Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study was simple to repeat and had been done over 242 times within 5 years of the study. Although, it is unlikely the original could have been replicated exactly because the variables may differ, such as age of pupils and teaching styles.
What are the effects of validity of field experiments?
Rosenthal and Jacobson claimed that teachers’ expectations were passed on through differences in interaction but didn’t carry out any observation of classroom interaction, so had no data to support this.
What is the case Milgram?
A laboratory experiment which qestioned obediance to authority tested whether the participant would stop the test as they asked questions to a stranger who would eceive a shock from the participant if they got the question wrong.
