EVALUATION

• STRENGTHS OF NATURAL EXPERIMENTS?

  • provide opportunities
  • high external validity
  • reduced demand characteristics
• WEAKNESSES OF NATURAL EXPERIMENTS?

  • low control of participant variables
  • few opportunities occur
  • hard to establish cause and effect
  • small sample size
• WHY IS THERE A LOW CONTROL OVER PARTICIPANT VARIABLES IN NATURAL EXPERIMENTS?

  no random allocation
• WHY IS IT HARD TO CLAIM CAUSE AND EFFECT IN NATURAL EXPERIMENTS?

  IV not deliberately changed