AQA A-Level Sociology: Quantitative Research Methods (Lab experiments)
- Created by: harriet_docksey
- Created on: 06-01-21 10:07
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- Laboratory Experiments
- Key features of laboratory experiments
- Control- the artificial environment means that scientists can control different variables in order to discover their effect
- Two groups in an experiment
- Experimental
- Exposed to the independent variable
- Control
- Their conditions are kept constant (dependent variable)
- Experimental
- Cause-and-effect relationships can be discovered
- Practical Issues
- Open systems: Keat and Urry (1982)- lab experiments are only useful when studying closed systems whereas society is an open system and countless factors are at play
- Individuals are complex: it's not possible to 'match' the members of the control and experimental groups exactly
- Studying the past: lab experiments can't be used to study an event in the past
- Small samples mean that it is very difficult to study large-scale social phenomena
- The Hawthorne Effect
- The Expectancy Effect- experimenter bias
- Ethical Issues
- Informed Consent: may defeat the aim of the experiment
- Harm to subjects
- Theoretical Issues
- Reliability
- The original experimenter can control the conditions and specify the precise steps that were originally followed
- Quantitative data is easily comparable
- It's detached and objective
- Representativ-eness
- Small samples mean it's not a representative cross-section of the population
- Such high levels of control aren't natural
- Lack of internal validity due to the Hawthorne Effect
- Interpretivists
- Humans are too different from animals, plants and chemicals to be studied in the same way
- Our behaviour isn't caused by external forces
- Reliability
- Key features of laboratory experiments
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