PSY-8 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Field Experiment, Dependent And Independent Variables, Operationalization
Document Summary
Laboratory variable (why you have control) dependent variable in a controlled setting. Goal: manipulate an independent variable and measure the effects on the. Want to talk about causation; eliminate anything that might affect dependent. Because you have such control, the behavior may not be naturally occurring (especially since the subject knows they are being observed) Consider ethics: as long as you"re observing a public behavior and not a risky behavior, then you don"t necessarily need to have consent. Ex: in one study, researchers put an abandoned car in a city block vs. a suburban block to see how long it took for people to vandalize it. However, vandalizing is illegal and by taping people for the study, you are potentially getting people in trouble (if the police were to ever ask for the tapes), and therefore it"s not ethical. Field experiment the variables! occur in the real world .
