SOC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter Chapter 8: The Control Group, Regression Analysis, Field Experiment

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 100
• Professor: Jennifer Anne Strickler

Document Summary

Experiments are well suited to projects with limited and well-defined concepts/principles as well as for hypothesis testing: better for explanatory than descriptive. The hawthorne effect: when subjects respond to the presence of researchers instead of the something to compare results to stimulus; being in the study affects behavior of the participants. Double-blind experiments have the researcher and participants both not be aware which group is the control in order to eliminate researcher bias. External invalidity is the possibility of the conclusions being drawn not being generalized. A field experiment is the formal experiment conducted outside of the laboratory in a natural setting. Pygmalion effect: the tendency to see in others what we"ve been led to expect. Natural experiments are those that occur outside of controlled settings altogether in the course of normal social events: these experiments may raise many validity problems due to the lack of a controlled environment.