Experiments

Question 1

Laboratory experiments

Answer 1

• sociologists have occasionally used the lab experiment as a way of studying human behaviour
• the experimental group
• the control group

Question 2

How do you treat the experimental group

Answer 2

• with this group, we might vary the quantity of nutrients that they received, carefully measuring and recording any changes in the plants size that we observe

Question 3

How do we treat the control group

Answer 3

• with this group, we would keep the quantity of nutrients constant, also measuring and recording any changes in the size of plants

Question 4

Comparing the results of the experimental group and the control group

Answer 4

• on comparing the results, we notice that the plants in the experimental group have grown more rapidly than the plants in the control groups after receiving extra nutrients in other words, we may have discovered a cause and effect relationship
• in scientific terms, the nutrient is the independent variable and the resulting growth is the effect or dependant variable

Question 5

What is the logic of the experimental method

Answer 5

• the logic of the experimental method is that the scientist manipulates the variables in which they are interested, in order to discover what effect they have. By following this method, the scientist can establish a cause and effect relationship. In turn, this will allow them to predict accurately what will happen in the future under specified conditions.

Question 6

Reliability

Answer 6

• once an experiment has been conducted, other scientists can then replicate it. That is, they can repeat it exactly in every detail. The lab experiment is therefore highly reliable, producing the same results each time. There are two reasons for this:
  1. The original experimenter can specify precisely what steps were followed in the original experiment so other researchers can repeat these in future
  2. It is a very detached method - the researchers merely manipulates the variables and records the results. The scientists personal feelings and opinions have no effect on the conduct or outcome of the experiment
• the lab experiment therefore has major advantages as the method used to identify cause and effect relationships in the natural sciences. For this reason, we might expect positivist sociologist to use lab experiments, since they favour a scientific approach. Despite this, however, there are several reasons why such experiments are rarely used in sociology, even by positivist

Question 7

Practical problems

Answer 7

• society is a very company phenomenon. In practice, it would be impossible to identify, let alone control, all the possible variables that might exert an influence on, say, a child’s educational achievement or a workers attitude to work
• another practical problem is that the lab experiment cannot be used to study the past since by definition it is impossible to control variables that were acting in past rather than the present
• in addition lab experiments usually only study a small sample. This makes it difficult to investigate large scale social phenomena such as religions or voting patterns. The small scale nature of lab experiments also reduces their representativeness

Question 8

Ethnical problems

Answer 8

• there are ethical objections to conducting experiments on human beings under certain circumstances. These include lack of informed consent, deception and harm to the participants

Question 9

Lack of informed consent

Answer 9

• as a general principle, the researcher needs the informed consent of the researcher participants. However, this may be difficult to obtain from groups such as children or people with learning difficulties who may be unable to understand the nature and purpose of the experiment

Question 10

Deception

Answer 10

• generally considered wrong to mislead people as to the nature of the experiment, as milgram did in his famous studies of obedience to authority. Milgram lied to his research participants about the purpose of the research, telling them what they were assisting in an experiment on learning, in which they were ordered by the researcher to administer electric shocks when the learning failed to answer questions correctly
• however, the purpose of the experiment was to test people’s willingness to obey orders to inflict pain. Unbeknown to milgrams research participants, no electric shocks were actually used. Milgram found that 65% of them were prepared to administer shocks of 450 volts

Question 11

Harm

Answer 11

• experiments may also harm participants.
• in milgrams experiments, many research participants were observed to ‘sweat, stutter, tremble, groan’’ etc
• however supporters of milgram argue that his experiments can be justified ethnically because they alert us to the dangers of blindly obeying authority figures. Moreover, the great majority of his participants said afterwards that they had learned something of lasting value

Question 12

The Hawthorne effect

Answer 12

• the lab is not a normal or natural environment. It is likely that any behaviour in these conditions is also unnatural or artificial. If people do not behave true to their ways, it will produce invalid results
• if people know they are being studies, they may behave differently e.g, by trying to second guess what the researcher wants them to do and acting accordingly. This will ruin the experiment, which depends on the subjects responding to the variables that the researcher introduces into the situation, not to the fact that they are being observed
• this problem became known as the ‘Hawthorne effect’

Question 13

The Hawthorne effect - mayo

Answer 13

• mayo began research into factors effecting workers productivity at the western electric company’s Hawthorne plant
• working with five female volunteer workers who knew he was conducting an experiment, mayo altered different variables such as lighting, heating, rest breaks and so on to see what effect the had on the volunteers output
• surprisingly, not only did output go up when he improved their working conditions, but it continued to rise even when conditions worsened
• mayo concluded that the workers were not responding to the changes he was making in the experimental variables, but simply to the fact that they were being studied and wanted to please the experimenter

Question 14

Free will

Answer 14

• interprevists sociologists argue that humans are fundamentally different from plants, rocks and other phenomena studied by natural scientists. Unlike these objects, have free will, conscious and choice
• this means our behaviour cannot be explained in terms of cause and effect. Instead, it can only be understood in terms of the choices we freely make. In this view, the experimental method, with its search for causes, is therefore not an appropriate method of studying humans
• because of these problems, sociologists have two alternatives to lab experiments - field experiments and the comparative method

Question 15

Field experiments

Answer 15

• a field experiment has two features that distinguish it from a lab experiment:
• it takes place in the subjects natural surroundings rather than in an artificial lab environment
• those invloved 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 variables in the situation to see what effect it has on the unwitting subjects of the experiment.

Question 16

Field experiments - rosenhans (1973)

Answer 16

• in rosenhans ‘pseudopatient’ experiment, researchers presented themselves at 12 California mental hospitals, saying they had been hearing voices. Each was admitted and diagnosed as schizophrenic
• once in hospital, they ceased to complain of hearing voices and acted normally. Nevertheless, hospital staff treated them all as if they were mentally ill. Non was found out
• this suggests that it was not the patients behaviour that led to them being treated as sick, but the label ‘schizophrenic’ itself that led staff to treat them in this way

Question 17

Evaluation of rosenhans study and field experiments

Answer 17

• shows the value of filed experiments. They are more ‘natural’, valid and realistic, and they avoid the artificiality of lab experiments. However, the more realistic we make the situation, the less control we have over the variables that might be operating. If so, we cannot be certain that the causes we have identified are the correct ones
• some critics also argue that field experiments are unethical since they involve carrying out an experiment on their subjects without their knowledge or consent

Question 18

The comparative method

Answer 18

• unlike other experiments, the comparative method is carried out only in the mind of the sociologist. It is a ‘thought experiment’ and it does not involve the researcher actually experimenting on real people at all. However, like lab and field experiments, it too is designed to discover cause and effect relationships. It works as follows:
• step 1 - identify two groups of people that are alike in all major respects expect for the one variable we are interested in
• step 2 - then compare the two groups to see if this one difference between them has any effect

Question 19

Durkheim’s study of suicide

Answer 19

• an example of the comparative method is Durkheims study of suicide. His hypothesis was that low levels of integration of individuals into social groups caused high rates of suicide. He argued that Catholicism produced higher levels of integration than Protestantism. From this. He therefore predicted that Protestants would have a higher suicide rate than catholics
• Durkheim then tested his prediction by comparing the suicide rates of catholics and Protestants who were similar in all other important respects e.g, in terms of where they lived etc. his prediction was supported by the official statistics which showed catholics to have lower suicide rates

Question 20

Evaluation of the comparative method

Answer 20

• in seeking to discover cause and effect relationships, the comparative method has three advantages: it avoids artificiality; it can be used to study past events and it poses no ethical problems, such as harming subjects
• however, the comparative method gives the researcher even less control over variables than do field experiments so, we can be even less certain whether a thought experiment really has discovered the cause of something