Experiments Flashcards
What is the experimental group?
It’s a group in the experiment that receives the variables being tested
What’s the control group?
The group that receives no variable
What’s the independent variable?
The cause
What’s a dependant variable?
The effect
Reliability of experiments(2)
The laboratory experiments are reliable because:
- the original experimenter can specify each step so it can be followed by someone else
- it’s detached- the researcher just manipulates the variables and records the results , there is no personal feelings that affects the outcome of the experiment
Therefore it can measure the cause and effect - preferred by positivists
Practical problems( experiments)
- in real life it’s impossible to control all the variables that might exert an influence on( for example a child’s educational achievement or a workers attitude to work)
- it can’t be used to study the past because you cannot control variables then
- it’s not large scale so you can’t study large phenomena like religion or voting patterns
- no representativeness
Ethical problems ( experiments)
Lack of informed consent- for some groups such as children with learning difficulties it’s hard to obtain consent if they do not understand the nature and purpose of the experiment
Deception- it’s wrong to mislead the people:
MILGRAM- obedience to authority study, he lied to the participants about the purpose of the experiment and said it was an experiment on learning, it was actually a test of their obedience to authority
65% performed the shock
Harm- in Milgrams study the participants were observed to have had physical pain like a seizure and biting their lips
However people say it can be justified because he alerted us about the dangers of blinding obeying authority and that the participants learnt something of lasting value
Hawthorne effect
If the people know they’re being studied it can ruin the experiment because the subject is not responding to the variables naturally - ‘Hawthorne effect’
MAYO- study of workers at a plant company found that the workers were not responding to the changes he was making in the experimental variables but instead to the fact they were being studied and wished to please the experimenter
Free will
Our behaviour cannot be explained in terms or cause but instead in the choices we freely make - a field experiment is better for this case
Field experiments:
- takes place in natural setting rather than artificial like laboratory
- those involved are unaware they are the subject of the experiment- so no Hawthorne effect
The comparative method
Step 1 : identify two groups that are alike in all ways except for the variable we’re testing
Step 2: compare the two groups to see if one difference between them has any effect
Durkheim study of suicide - using the comparative method
Durkheim tested his prediction(about individualism and suicide), by comparing suicide rates of catholics and protestants( who were similar). This prediction was supported by statistics that show catholics to have lower suicide rate
Evaluation- for cause and effect relationships the comparative method has three advantages:
-avoids artificiality
-it can study past events
- no ethical problems like harm
However it gives the researcher less co by to over variables so we’re are not certain about the cause of something
