Research Methods

Question 1

Lab Experiments- strengths

Answer 1

highly reliable, no personal feelings, positivistic, easier to control extraneous variables

Question 2

Lab Experiments- limitations

Answer 2

practical- cannot study past, small samples
ethical- lack of informed consent, deception, harm, hawthorne effect

Question 3

Lab Experiments- Milgram

Answer 3

1974, study of obedience to authority, did not tell researchees nature of his project, 65% prepared to administer 450 volts of electricity, people sweat and groaned and 3 subjects had full seizures

Question 4

Field Experiments- strengths

Answer 4

ecological validity, no sampling bias as people not brought in

Question 5

Field Experiments- limitations

Answer 5

poor reliability, cannot control extraneous variables so cannot guarantee the causes identified are the correct ones, lack of informed consent, may be harder to get into certain areas (schools)

Question 6

Field Experiments- Pygmallion in the classroom

Answer 6

Rosenthal and Jacobson, school environment, test to identify kids as spurters but was actually an experiment on labelling as the kids were picked at random but did do better later, self fulfilling prophecy experiment
lack of informed consent on the teachers, may have negatively effected other kids who did not get as much attention, more or less reliable, no data to support claim that it was bc of labelling so lacks validity

Question 7

Questionnaires- strengths

Answer 7

quick and cheap way to to get large amounts of data from large groups of people, no need to recruit or train interviewers, data is easy to quantify, very reliable, favoured by positivists bc they are detached and close ended, representative

Question 8

Questionnaires- limitations

Answer 8

lots of people unlikely to complete and return time consuming questionnaire so questions brief but makes data superficial, low response rate, inflexible and cannot explore new areas of interest, lacks validity bc they only offer snapshots and are too detached, participants can easily lie or not understand

Question 9

Questionnaires- Census

Question 10

Structure Interviews- strengths

Answer 10

training is relatively straightforward and cheap, can cover quite a lot of people quickly, easily quantified results, positivistic