Examine why some sociologists choose not to use experiments when conducting research? (20 marks) Many sociologists choose not to use laboratory experiments for research because it fails to achieve their main goal of validity. To have complete control of conditions in a lab experiment is impossible as that level of control over variables would require a completely artificial environment which will be very expensive. However in contrast other sociologists such as Positivists disagree and are in favour of laboratory experiments. Other alternatives to laboratory experiments are field experiment and the comparative method.
Quantitative research allows assessing and analyzing data. The association between an independent and dependent variable is studied in detail. Quantitative research can be used to test hypotheses in trials since it is effective in measuring data gathered from the statistics. The main disadvantage of quantitative research is that a large sample of the population must be studied; the larger the sample of people researched, the more statistically accurate the results will be. However,
Conflicts of Altruism to Profit Lora Ririe Biology Abstract Altruism and profit are two forces that deeply influence research. As can been seen with the HeLa cells, the research began as an altruistic project but then progressed to a profit gaining product. If all scientific experiments and research were conducted for profit, immorality would occur. On the other hand, if all research was based on altruism, hardly any progress in the scientific field would be made due to lack of funding and protests. However, the risks of profit lead research can be seen in Southam’s experimentations and skin cream products today.
Strength / Weakness - research that is in the form of naturally occurring phenomena (Roberts and Lamb) has good ecological validity but is not scientific or replicable as variables were not highly controlled and because it is not artificial. It would also be unethical to test eye witness testimony when a real sensitive subject is being discussed. Strength / Weakness - the results could be due to a number of factors such as: young people may be more used to memory tests or older adults have poorer health leading to memory impairment. Weakness - the research findings are inconclusive. Weakness - the factors given by researchers, such as the ones stated, are only assumptions with no scientific evidence.
These non-animal methods replace those archaic animal tests, and take less time to complete. It' shocking that individuals are not informed that non-animal experimentation methods are applicable to human life. The physiological chip is an amazing invention that contains cell compartments that are eligible to test the effects of drugs. Barnard (2007) describes the ability of the chip to “mimic the complex functions of the human body” (p.19). If a simple chip has the power to mimic the functions of the human body, then it is a huge resource to research.
Though this is often difficult as social facts tend to be unnoticeable therefore sociologists must avoid being bias when developing their theories and concepts. Positivist Popper suggested in his theory of falsification that in order for something to be regarded as a valid science it must try to disprove their hypothesis. He believed that science can never have absolute truth, but the longer it can go without being falsified the truer it is. He rejects
b) It impacts your IT environment because without this things would get leaked and confidential information will be available to other countries. c) I don’t believe my organization complies with all of the requirements because I don’t work so this does not
This means that structured interviews will appeal to positivists as they like sociological methods which gain reliability, gain quantitative date and can cope with a large sample size. Positivists like these because they all help to find the cause of something rather than the effect; this in turn lets positivists to seek the social science aspect of sociology. A sociologist may decide to use structured interviews if they are willing to study a sample of a large number of participants. Structured interviews will also gain a high response rate unlike questionnaires; this is because the interview is face to face rather than putting a set of questions through a door. However participants who are interviewed are those with a lot of time on their hands this can make the sample unrepresentative of the whole population as they may be lonely people who have a lot of time on their hands.
This evidence can be seen as reliable since it was scientific, conducted in a laboratory, and produced quantative data that makes it easy to summarise and compare with other data. However, it can be argued that this experiment lacks mundane realism and does not reflect real life memory tasks, also that it doesn’t take into account people’s varying ways of remembering words, which may bias the results. Furthermore, individual differences, such as people’s attention spans were not taken into account, which could
Surveys are not ideal for controversial issues, questions that bear controversies may not be precisely answered by the participants because of the probably difficulty of recalling the information related to them. The truth behind these controversies