Location of research

• Laboratory; Most scientific way to carry out research, a controlled setting, can use scientific equipment e.g. brain scans

  +Control EV's, researcher can control environments,able to establish cause and effect between IV and DV

  +Increases reliability, easily repeatable due to controlled conditions, better for consistency checking

  -Lowers ecological validity,highly controlled environments, artifical = difficult to generalise

  -Demand characteristics, aware of being studied, pick up cues as to aim, help/hinder
• Field; Most natural way to investigate, carried out in a real life setting, researcher goes into field

  +Increases ecological validity, no artificial manipulation of IV = possible to generalise to real life

  +Lowers demand characteristics, unaware they are being studied, behaviour likely to be normal

  -Difficult to replicate, lowers reliability, difficult to check consistency

  -Difficult to use scientific equipment for more objective measure
• Online; Newest method of investigating, through websites to access ppts, usually questionnaires

  +Can access large and diverse groups of ppts, allows it to be more representative

  +Cost effective, cheap software, less researcher time required, analysis of data can be easier

  -Limited to questionnaires, chance of social desirability which lowers internal validity

  -Ethical issues such as psychological harm, difficult to deal with as researcher isnt face to face, difficult to be certain of valid consent