QUANTITATIVE research methods LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

QUANTITATIVE research methods LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

1. Control

   • the lab is an artificial environment in which the scientist can control different variables.

2. the experimental group

   • are exposed to a variable (called the independent variable) the researcher believes may have a particular effect

3. the control group

   • are not exposed to the independent variable - their conditions are kept constant

4. cause and effect

   • the condition of both groups is measured before the experiment starts and again at the end. if we discover a change in the experimental group but none in the control group, we may conclude that this was caused by the different treatments the two groups received.

5. practical issues

   • open system
     • keat and Urry (1982) argue lab experiments only good for closed system where researcher can control the and measure all the relevant variables and make precise predictions. however for sociologist society has countless factors are at work in any given situation and interacting with others
   • individuals are complex
     • no two human beings are exactly alike
   • studying the past
     • can be used to study in the past
   • small samples
     • makes difficult to study large groups
   • the Hawthorne effect
     • behaviour may be artificial, subjects still know they are being experimented on
   • the expectancy effect
     • what a researcher expects to happen in the experiment can affect its actual outcome. being treated unconsciously with influences

6. ethical issues

   • informed consent
     • of the subject of the experiment, gaining agreement to take part. what risked and effects their may be
   • harm to subjects
     • minor or temporary harm may be justified ethically if the result yield significant social benefits

7. theoretical issues

   • reliability and hypothesis
     • a reliable method is one that can be replicated and repeated to get same results.
     • positivists
       • highly reliable because as it can be re-run easily is can be easily compared to the original, the subjective feeling feelings and values from researcher have no effect of the outcome of the experiment
   • representativeness
     • lack external validity, control over the conditions in the experiment is valuable and not true for the same outside the lab. this is because experiments can only study a small sample group, the greater the risk of the cross section no what the researcher is interested in.
   • positivists love
   • internal validity
     • the artificiality of the lab experiment
   • interpretivism and free will
     • unlike objects such as plants, rocks and other natural phenomena, we have free will and choice. our behaviour cannot be explained by cause and effects statements, as positivists believee