Experiments

Question 1

What are two types of experiment available to sociologists?

Answer 1

Lab and social/field

Question 2

What is a lab experiment?

Answer 2

Testing a hypotheses where all variables and possible causes of a conditions are under control of the research

Question 3

What are the advantages of a lab experiment?

Answer 3

• enable scientists to test a hypothesis under controlled conditions
• make it easier to isolate and manipulate the possible causes of events
• produce lots of statical data that can be compared for correlations or relationships

Question 4

What do positivist like lab experiments?

Answer 4

They are very scientific in that they are reliable and objective

Question 5

What are the disadvantage of lab experiments?

Answer 5

• hard to use in sociol research as these events are not often the revisit of a single variable
• impossible to get human experiment groups that are exactly alike as people don’t share the same interpretation of the same event
• unethical to experiment of people without their knowledge
• Hawthorne effect

Question 6

What is a social/field experiment?

Answer 6

Invoke the research in a process whereby a situation is set up in a naturalistic context e.g in a hospital ward
-sociol good then manipulates one particular variable

Question 7

What are the strengths of a field experiment?

Answer 7

• allow the sociologist to unravel the processes and rules of natural everyday social life and behaviour
• allow researcher to get very close to people’s interpretations
• qualitative info is more likely - increasing validity

Question 8

Why do interpretists like using these type of experiments?

Answer 8

They can uncover the meanings/interpretations that underpin social behaviour

Question 9

What are the weakness of social/field experiments?

Answer 9

• don’t involve ‘informed consent’ so therefore there has been some concern expressed with things such a deception
• psychological harm
• hawthorn effect
• not representative as often small samples