Interpretivist sociologists would choose to not use lab experiments because they lack ecological validity as they are conducted within an environment that is artificial to the participant. This means that the results don’t reflect true-life behaviour because of both the environment they conducted the task in, and the nature of the task wasn’t true to real life and can also be said to not be generalisable to a population because of their small sample sizes in which lab experiments are conducted. Furthermore, participants might have been aware that they were being studied and so might not act normally, which is called the Hawthorne effect. Another reason why interpretivist sociologists don’t choose to use lab experiments is that they say human behaviour cannot be measured or explained in terms of cause and effect, and instead humans act in terms of feeling, choices and also individual motives. Society doesn’t lend itself to be studied in a laboratory and this is because it is so complex and cannot be artificially created.
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.
However, they are opposed by Interpretivists who say they impose the researcher’s framework of ideas on the respondents and they claim this may influence the respondents’ view on the question being asked. A reason as to why some sociologists choose not to use questionnaires when conducting research is because of a chance of a low response rate. This may be a result of people who receive questionnaires being not bothered to complete and return it. This can be a problem as the people who do not respond having a different opinion to those who do respond, this does not provide accurate representativeness. A higher response rate can be obtained if follow-up questionnaires are sent, but this can add to the cost and time.
Also their small scale means that results may not be representative or generalisable to the wider population. On the other hand interpretivists reject the laboratory experiments because it fails to achieve their main goal of validity. It is an artificial environment producing unnatural behavior. Drifting away from the advantages, There are various practical problems with laboratory experiments. Society is very complex and in practice it would be impossible to control variables that may influence a situation.
I believe that this study was not ethical to conduct because it directly harmed another person just to get a statistic and a person would always get hurt based on the fact that human behavior follows normative influence almost every time. A reason for an ethics board to not approve a test like this one could be to just define ethics in itself, and use that explanation for your whole argument. Ethics is defined as a branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions (Dictionary.com, LLC. Copyright © 2009). This means that there are certain things you can and cannot do to a human being just to get results for a test.
Although this research has helped many psychologists (Erickson et al, Everett waters) with their experiments this one may not be very valid, because the results may not apply to infants with different cultures and beliefs, therefore we cannot generalize the results as it was only tested on middle-class US children. Another fault in the experiment was that it didn’t take into account the extraneous variables which may have
b Operations Experiment 9A: Lab Operations and Uncertainty Jenaqua Hairston Dr. Bump 10/20/11 Purpose/Background During experiments values are obtained and compared to true values which leads to the accuracy of an experiment. However, a complete accurate value is never achieved, because all experimental data is impacted by errors of some sort. Whether it be human error or things along the line of measurements taken, values will not always meet the expectations of a true value. Experimental uncertainty is often present in the form of systematic errors which can not be avoided. Systematic error in physical sciences commonly occurs with the measuring instrument having a zero error.
Unlike in a field experiment where the participants are completely unaware that they are being observed so it gives more of a natural response, this allows the researchers to gain results with greater validity. In a laboratory experiment, the researchers have to tell the percipients the reasons for the experiment to allow the percipients to give full consent this is due to the ethical reasons such as if the person doesn’t agree due to religion/beliefs, ethnicity ect. Where as, the percipients of a field experiment have to be unaware of the reasons for the research to allow a higher rate of natural answers. This means that field experiments are less ethically agreed with. An example of a laboratory experiment is Asch (a psychologist) who tested the rate of conformity within groups.
Content theory explains why human needs change with time. Another theory that attempts to explain human behavior is Process theory. Content theory includes the work of David McClelland, Abraham Maslow and other psychologists as they attempted to explain why human needs change, but not how they change. Content theories explain the specific factors that motivate people. In other words, they answer the question What drives behaviour?
Extraneous Variables are undesirable variables that influence the relationship between the variables that an experimenter is examining. They exist in all studies and can affect the measurement of study variables and the relationships among these variables. Because of this, they are of primary concern in quantitative studies because they can interfere with obtaining a clear understanding of the relational or causal dynamics within these studies (Burns & Grove, 2011). Another way to think of it is they are variables that could possibly influence the outcome of an experiment, though they are not the variables of actually of interest. A major goal in research design is to decrease or control the influence of extraneous variables as much as possible.