THEORY AND METHODS: Experiments Flashcards
Field experiments
Practical (adv, disadv)
Ethical (adv, disadv)
General (adv, disadv)
PRACTICAL
ADV: Professionals to do ‘on the job’ like teachers
- Cheap way of measuring change overtime (Rosenthal + Jacobsen)
- Easier than lab experiments sometimes
DISADV: Access might be more of a problem
- Researcher has to travel - issue of time and money
ETHICAL
ADV: Less hierarchical than lab experiments
DISADV: Often necessary to deceive respondents to produce valid results
GENERAL
ADV: More common in sociology
- Better representativeness - can observe larger groups of people more easily
- Large scale research - can observe how people operate in those institutions
- External validity - Natural setting rather than artificial
DISADV: Hawthorne effect (people may act differently)
- More difficult to control variables
= lower reliability, can’t replicate the same conditions
Lab experiments
Practical (adv, disadv)
Ethical (adv, disadv)
Theoretical (adv, disadv)
General (adv, disadv)
PRACTICAL
ADV: Easy to attract funding as it has a certain prestige
- Takes place in 1 setting, don’t need to chase respondents
DISADV: Impractical to observe large scale processes in a small scale lab - representativeness lower
- Time - small samples need consecutive experiments on small groups, large samples will take time
ETHICAL
ADV: seek to gain informed consent
- Rarely ask participants to do anything illegal
- Findings may benefit society (Milgram experiment, Zimbardo)
DISADV: Often need to deceive people to they dont act differently
- Some experiments can cause harm to participants (Milgram)
- The imposition problem - unequal relationship between researcher and respondent. Lowers validity - when the questions chosen by the researcher limit the ability for respondents to answer how they truly feel
THEORETICAL
ADV: (Positivism) Controlled conditions allow isolation of variables
- can establish cause and effect relationships
- Collect objective knowledge (reliable and valid)
DISADV: Reductionist - humans aren’t puppets and so human behaviour can’t be observed through simple cause and effect relationships
- Lack external validity - artificial setting is not true to the nature of the research
- Small scale and so unrepresentative
Rosenthal + Jacobsen
Pygmalion in the class room
- What
- Conclusion
WHAT: Pupils given an iq test = informed teachers 20% of pupils were likely to academically ‘spurt’ in the next year = in reality, the 20% were selected randomly = all pupils were retested 8 months later and the sputters had gained 12 IQ points from 8
CONCLUSION: Higher teacher expectations were responsible for this difference in achievement
Rosenthal + Jacobsen
Pygmalion in the class room
- Limitations
- Deception / lack of informed consent - had to deceive teachers and pupils didn’t know what was going on ETHICAL PROBLEMS: Other 80% of pupils were harmed as teachers gave disproportionate amounts of attention to spurting groups
- Given children’s rights and welfare is more concerned about today, the experiment would’ve been unacceptable
- Reliability - Exact conditions can’t be repeated - given differences in schools and children
- Extraneous variables - Claimed it was higher teacher expectations, but there’s not evidence. Could be other factors
Milgram experiment
- Aim
- What
- Results
AIM: Interested in how far people would obey authority, even if it involved harm
- Closely linked to real life atrocities like the Holocaust
WHAT: 2 people assigned roles - teacher and learner - except the learner was an actor and was an experimenter
- the teacher (participant) questioned the learner (actor) and if they got a question wrong, they would be shocked.
- The more questions they got wrong, the higher the voltage to a maximum of 450, which is fatal
RESULTS: 2/3 of participant went to 450 volts
Milgram experiment
- Strengths
- Weaknesses (Browne)
STRENGTHS: Reliability - given the repeatable conditions and similar results in 2 repeats
- Challenges the way of society and is beneficial
WEAKNESSES: Artificial - authority represents itself in different ways - teachers eg
BROWNE - It caused trauma, and therefore harm to participant
- Deception
Stanford Prison experiment
- What
- Outcomes
- Weaknesses
WHAT: College students decided to take part in either being a prisoner or a guard in artificial prisons. Researchers were able to observe the behavior of the prisoners and guards using hidden cameras and microphones
Everything was like a real prison, and things quickly escalated on day 2 where guards started to act violently.
OUTCOMES: The guards started to act in dehumanising, hostile ways and a certain prisoner was told to be sent home due to the acute anxiety that was being caused by the prison guards, followed by 5 more prisoners.
The experiment had to be stopped early
WEAKNESSES: Immense harm to participant that caused anxiety and trauma
Comparative method
- What
- Who and why
- The researcher collects data about different societies or groups in the real world
- They then compare those societies to identify the conditions that are present in on society, but lacking in the other
- Explains the causes of some social events
WHO + WHY: Commonly used by positivists who are concerns with trying to isolate and identify the causes of social events and behaviour
Give an example study of the comparative method
- what
- Hypothesis
- How
WHAT: Durkheims suicide study
HYPOTHESIS: Low levels of integration of individuals into social groups caused suicide
Argues Catholicism produced higher levels of integration than Protestantism, so Protestants were seen to have higher levels of suicide
HOW: Compared suicide rates of Catholics and Protestants who were similar in all other aspects (Where they lived etc.)
Comparative method
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
ADV: Avoids artificiality
- Can be used to study past events
- Poses no ethical problems like many harming subjects
DISADV: Even less controls over variables than field experiments
- Less reliable - aren’t entirely sure if the thought experiment has discovered the actual cause of something
Rosenhan ‘pseudopatient’ experiment
- What
- Evaluation
Researchers presented themselves at 12 California mental hospitals, saying they had been hearing voices. Each was admitted and diagnosed as schizophrenic
Once in hospital, they ceased to complain of hearing voices and acted normally. Nethertheless, hospital staff treated them all as if they were mentally ill. None was found out
This suggests it was not the patients behaviour that led to them being treated as sick, but the label schizophrenic itself led the staff to treat them this way
EVALUATION: More natural setting = more valid and realistic
