Survey Research and Experiments Flashcards
what type of experiment is best for sensitive organizational topics?
Typical laboratory studies are insufficient in creating the real-world pressures around these tabooed topics, and accurate reporting in traditional field studies would be obscured.
Field experiments can overcome these challenges and build important knowledge around sensitive organizational topics.
What Are Field Experiments?
field experiments are a method that uses random assignment to implement a manipulation relevant to working adult participants engaging in genuine tasks or with genuine outcomes in natural settings.
field experiments are moderately high regarding precision of measurement and realism of context but low regarding generalizability.
- Manipulate behavioral variables in a field setting
- Manipulation should affect genuine tasks and genuine outcomes
What are a field experiments’ three important components?
(a) the necessity of random assignment: It is critical because it functions to ‘‘draw samples that are comparable to each other within known limits of sampling error’’. This is particularly critical when it comes to organizationally sensitive topics because equivalence across experimental conditions determines the validity of the results. Randomization also avoids selection bias
(b) the use of genuine tasks: influences the validity of research designs.
(c) the reliance on natural settings: increase ecological validity.
What is the golden standard?
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are regarded as the gold standard of scientific evidence. By randomising a treatment across study arms, RCTs eliminate patient-treatment selection bias, resulting in reliable causal inference.
what are some methodological challenges in conducting field experiments?
treatment-related attrition, small sample sizes, and treatment-related refusals to participate in the research.
A range of challenges emerges when conducting field experiments that concern ethical, legal, measurement, interpersonal, and publishing issues.
Is it is easier to draw causal inferences from laboratory experimentation over field experiments?
No. random assignment is the keystone of high-quality laboratory and field research that determines attributions of causality.
what is the law of big numbers?
as the number of subjects increases, the average of a sample approaches the average of the population -> the bigger the sample the more closely it is copying the population.
Why are experiments rare in management journals?
Experiments might not be well suited for complex, multicomponent, nonlinear phenomena
Often not applicable to long-term, macro-level phenomena
Small parts of the entire complex model/process
what is a vignette experiment?
A vignette experiment consists of a collection of vignettes, that is, a set of systematically varied descriptions of subjects, objects, or situations in order to elicit respondents’ beliefs, attitudes, or intended behaviors with respect to the presented vignettes.
what type of analysis is typically used for experiments?
ANOVA OR ANCOVA
what type of analysis is typically used for surveys?
Regression
What is the difference between ANOVA and ANCOVA
ANCOVA also considers control variables
Name some important assumptions for AN(C)OVA
- Homogeneity of variance between groups
- Independence of observations
- control variable is idenpendent of the treatment
What is most important for explanatory research?
Internal validity
Describe the different types of variables
Four types of variables:
Categorical variables:
Nominals: variable names are merely labels to classify an object. Don’t have a mathematical meaning behind it.
Ordinal: variable names are merely labels to classify an object. Don’t have a mathematical meaning behind it. Additionally, they have an order.
Continuous variables:
Interval variables: Numbers has a meaning, i.e., distance between two locations in km.
Ratio: Meaningful distance between variables. Meaningful null point (i.e., salary of 0, means no salary)
