Term
Strengths and weaknesses of experimental research
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Definition
- Strengths of experimental research
- Evidence of causality
- Control
- Experiments can be replicated several times
- Cost
- Weaknesses of experimental research
- Artificiality of labratory setting
- Social processes that occur in a lab might not occur in a more natural society
- Researcher (experimenter) bias
- To handle this bias, the double-blind technique is used
- Limited scope
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Term
| Three components of an experimental study |
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Definition
- Independent and dependent variables
- Effect of stimulus on some outcome variable
- Pretesting and post-testing
- Ability to assess change before and after manipulation
- Experimental and control groups
- Comparison group that does not get stimulus
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Term
| Experimental group vs. Control group |
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Definition
- Must be as similar as possible
- Importance of randomization
- Control group represents what the experimental group would have been like had it not been exposed to the experimental stimulu.
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Term
| How to control for the effects of onfounding (or extraneous) variables to ensure internal validity |
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Definition
- Randomization
- Matching
- Matching by constancy
- i.e. use only female participants, test all subjects at same time of day, etc.
- May reduce external validity
- i.e., do results generalize to men?
- Matching by pairing
- Participants are paired on a similar value of an extranous variable before being assigned to different groups
- Requires a pretest and prior knowledge about the subjects
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Term
Five experimental designs - Pretest-Posttest Control Group
- Posttest-Only Control Group
- Solomon Four-Group Design
- Factorial Design
- Quasi-Experimental Design
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Definition
- Pretest-Posttest Control Group
- Compare the difference in pre-test and post-test samples of the experimental group with the difference in the pre-test and post-test samples of the control group
- Posttest-Only Control Group
- Compare post-test sample of experimental group with post-test sample of control group.
- Solomon Four-Group Design
- The population is randomly divided into four samples. Two of the groups are experimental samples. Two groups experience no experimental manipulation of variables. Two groups receive a pretest and a post test. Two groups receive only a post test. This is an improvement over the classical design because it controls for the effect of the pretest.
- Factorial Design
- Quasi-Experimental Design
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