field experiments and the comparative method Flashcards
What is a field experiment? and what methodist are more likely to use it? and why?
an experiment that thats place outside a laboratory in a normal social situation
positivist use experiments more howver intrepretivist use field experiemnets over lab experiments because it produces qualitiative data
name 4 field experiment studies?
noon, rosenthal and jacobson, sisson and elliott
summarise noon’s study?
studied ethnicity and racism, gave cv’s to a hundred companies under the name patel and another evans and found that evans got more reponses
summarise rosenthal and jacobson’s study?
made pupils sit and IQ test then picked students at random and identified them as sputers to the teacher and found they performed better proving teacher labelling
summarise sisson’s study?
did a study on what people percieve to be your social class can affect how they communicate with you, found that the person with the bussiness clothes got more help on directions compared to the person in the typical working class clothes
summarise elliot’s study?
she found that when students where told they where suprior to other students they acted more aggressive and insultive to them and also improved there productivity proving discrimination
name a practical strength of field experiments?
they cost less than lab experiments and they can be often used to test the effectiveness of government policies like in noon’s study
name a theoritcal streghth of field experiments?
high ecological validity as the findings are true to the natural setting and it also has objectivity as the research does not influence it
name ethical limitations with field experiments?
there is no right to withdraw, could cause psycological harm like with elliots study and no informed consent
name a theoretical limitation of field experiment?
lack of control over the variables, so it could affect its validity like in sisson study there could have been other things influencing wether oe not the person got help like the time of day if its rush hour
how is a comparative method differnt from other experiments?
only carried out in the mind of the sociologist
what does compartive method have in common with other experiments?
it was designed to dicover cause and effect relationships
name an example of a comparative method study done?
durkhiem’s in his study of suicide
what was durkeim hypothesis in his study?
that catholicism produced higher levels of intergration than protestinicm so he predicted they had lower levels of sucicide rates
what advatages are to a comparative method?
avoids artificiality, only was to do an experiment on a past event, can avoid ethical problems as there is no partcipants
