Experiments complete

• Laboratory experiments are favoured by natural scientists for discovering the basic principle of the experimental method
• The logic of the experimental method is that the scientist manipulates the variables of interest to discover the effect
• Following the experimental method allows the scientist to establish cause-and-effect relationships and make accurate predictions
• The laboratory experiment is highly reliable, producing the same results each time
• Reasons for reliability of laboratory experiments


  • The original experimenter can specify precisely what steps were followed
  • The researcher merely manipulates variables and records results, with no effect from personal feelings or opinions
• Positivist sociologists favour a scientific approach and would be expected to use laboratory experiments
• Reasons why laboratory experiments are rarely used in sociology

  • Practical problems - society is too complex to control all variables
  • Cannot be used to study the past
  • Small samples reduce representativeness
  • Ethical problems - lack of informed consent especially from groups such as children or people with learning difficulties, deception, potential harm to participants
• Interpretivists argue that humans have free will, consciousness and choice, so their behaviour cannot be explained by cause and effect
• Field experiments

  • Take place in the subject's natural surroundings
  • Subjects are generally unaware they are being experimented on
• Field experiments are more natural, valid and realistic than laboratory experiments, but have less control over variables
• Comparative method


  • A thought experiment carried out in the mind of the sociologist
  • Compares two similar groups that differ in one variable of interest
• The comparative method avoids artificiality, can study past events, and has no ethical problems, but has even less control over variables than field experiments
• Durkheim's study of suicide compared Catholic and Protestant suicide rates to test his hypothesis that low social integration causes higher suicide
• the experimental group is the group were a variable is changed and the control group is where the variables are kept the same
• a dependent variable is what we measure or observe as an effect of our independent variable
• an independent variable is the thing we change or manipulate to see if it affects something else (dependent variable)
• a confounding variable is any other factor which may affect the outcome of your research
• The Hawthorne effect or experimental effect is when the behaviour of a participant is influenced by the presence of the researcher so their behaviour may change
• free will

  interpretivist argue that humans are different from plants and unlike them we have free will and a conscious so our behaviour cannot be explained by cause and effect it can be understood in terms of the choices we freely make.
• two groups in a lab experiment

  the experimental group and the control group
• Deception 


  Milgram 1974 did a famous study on obedience to authority. Milgram lied to his participants about the purpose of the research telling them that they were assisting in an experiment on learning in which they were ordered by the researcher to administer an electric shock when the learner failed to answer the question. the purpose was actually to test if people were willing to inflict pain. he found 65% of them were prepared to administer shocks of 450 volts
• field experiment example 


  Rosenhan's 1973 the researcher presented themselves at 12 California mental hospitals saying they had been hearing voices each was admitted and diagnosed with schizophrenia once in hospital they acted normally but staff treated them the same as if they were mentally ill this suggested it was not the patients behaviour that led them being treated as though they were sick it was the label of schizophrenic that led staff to treat them this way.
• the comparative method steps

  1. identify 2 groups of people that are alike in all major respects expect for the one variable you are studying 2. compare the two groups to see if the one difference has any effect
• problems with field experiments

  overall lack of control of variables

  Hawthorne effect if they know they are being observed

  experimenter bias

  ethical problems such as deception

  limited application

  lack of validity