Experiments

• Lab experiments have quantified results and field experiments are done in a natural social situation.
• Laboratory experiments - completed in controlled settings 
• Field experiments - completed in natural settings
• Laboratory experiments advantages - They usually collect quantitative data which give the experiment reliability as it can be repeated. It is completed in a controlled environment for the researcher and participant. It is easy for the researcher to observe all the different variables (cause (independant) and effect (dependent)), it also stops anything from being biassed. It is also generalisable because people could use your research to help explain other similar settings.
• Laboratory experiments disadvantages - People who are a part of the experiment might change their behaviour which makes the data collected less reliable (this is known as the Hawthorne effect). Researchers are not able to control or change the way the participants behave which can make it hard to find the correlation of two different variables.
• Laboratory experiments disadvantages - It doesn’t have much validity as we don’t know whether people would behave like they would normally in a new environment. There are some ethical questions because we don’t know whether people get harmed during the experiments, we also cannot fit society into a laboratory which gives it less validity as it isn’t true to life.
• Field experiments advantages - The research is completed in normal social situations which means that it is less likely that the Hawthorne effect will happen. The researcher is able to control some of the variables and observe the effects of the different variables. The researcher will have an insight into the different meanings and perceptions that are held by the subjects which gave the experiment validity.
• Field experiments disadvantages - There are a lot of ethical questions about field experiments as the participants don’t have the right to withdraw, the researcher wouldn’t have gotten informed consent from the participant. There is a lack of control which makes it impossible to be able to identify and control all of the variables, the variables could also be affected by things like time.
• Field experiment disadvantages - There is also an experimenter bias as people will act in the ways that they see other people, they might also act in ways that they think others think that they should act. It mainly relies on the skill of the observer.