Issues and debates: practical issues (soc)

Question 1

INTRO

Practical issues

Answer 1

Practical issues include trying to control research to ensure replicability and increase reliability. Researchers often have to balance practical questions such as what design is appropriate with cost and time constraints. Practical issues can include sampling participants, and choosing which research method is most appropriate to investigate a topic, balancing realism with control.

Question 2

A01 & A03 (aren’t)

Answer 2

A01
Field experiments studying prejudice and obedience suffer from low control over extraneous variables, reducing reliability and generalisability.

A03
Sherif’s Robbers Cave Study:
Naturalistic setting showed how group membership alone causes prejudice.
However, limited by the use of only young boys from similar backgrounds, reducing applicability to wider populations.

Question 3

A01 & A03 (are)

Answer 3

A01
Self-reports can suffer from demand characteristics and social desirability, compromising data reliability and validity.

A03
Milgram’s obedience study:
Used deception to minimise demand characteristics, improving internal validity.
However, his artificial lab setting and homogeneous (white, male) sample limit generalisability.