One advantage of conducting research in the field is that the behaviour is more natural, as students are in a familiar classroom setting and may be unaware they are being studied. This increases ecological validity and makes the findings more generalisable to real-life teaching situations.
Disadvantage: controlling extraneous variables
One disadvantage is the lack of control over extraneous variables. In a classroom, factors like different teaching styles or peer interactions could influence students’ smiling behaviour, reducing the internal validity of the research.
