TYPES OF EXPERIMENTS (EVALUATION)

Question 1

Name 3 strengths of a lab experiment.

Answer 1

1. RELIABLE: Due to standardisation which allows results/conditions can be replicated.
2. INTERNALLY VALID: Due to high control over variables, eliminating confounding variables. Causal relationship can be established
3. PRECISON: Variables can be measured accuratley due to specialised equitement available in a lab setting.

RIP

Question 2

Name 3 weaknesses of a lab experiment

Answer 2

1. LOW EXTERNAL VALIDITY: due to aritifical (controlled) setting, thus hard to generalise results to real world behaviour/settings.
2. DEMAND CHARACTERISTIC RISK: Ppts awareness of being studied, may change behaviour, creating bias.
3. EXPERIMENTER BIAS: The researchers expectations may affect behaviour or alter interpretations of results.

LDE

Question 3

Name 3 strengths of a field experiment

Answer 3

1. Ecological Validity: natural settings, normal settings will reflect genuine behaviors, thus generalizing well to real life.
2. Lowered Demand Characteristic risk: If ppts don’t know they are being studied.
3. High mundane realism: Tasks will resemble real life situations, thus behaviours produced will be natural, inc applicability to real world.

Question 4

Name 3 weaknesses of a field experiment

Answer 4

1. Low internal validity: EV can confound results due to reduced control (no causal relationships)
2. Low reliability: Exact replication of environment is hard.
3. Sample bias: Less control over who partcipates/ harder to randomly allocate.

Question 5

Name 3 strengths of a quasi/ natural experiment

Answer 5

1.Ethical: : Allows researchers to study variables that can’t ethically be manipulated (trauma exposure).

2.RWA: Researchers can examine effects of naturally occurring events/ pre-existing groups, provides valuable insights into real-world phenomena.

3.Ecological validity: Often occur in real-world settings, the findings are more likely to reflect real-life situations and behaviors

Question 6

Name 2 weakneses of a quasi/natural experiment

Answer 6

1. No Random assignment:Ppts cannot be randomly assigned to groups, which can introduce bias and make it harder to establish clear causal relationships
2. Internal validity: Many EV can’t be controlled, it’s difficult to rule out alternative explanations for the findings.