COMM 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Treatment And Control Groups, Longitudinal Study, Meta-Analysis
20 Sep 2016
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Experimental method: opportunity to control conditions people, environment, etc, ex. Treatment group- exposed to an independent variable that is manipulated (varying levels of violence in the tv show) See whether this manipulation leads to more or less behavior than in the other group. What you don"t want is personality, gender, socioeconomic status, or age to be a factor in your experiment randomized subject pool. Makes the groups in an experiment equal just prior to their exposure to the experimental manipulation. Strengths and weaknesses of experimental research: strengths: Can afford the researcher much control weed out outside factors isolate variables. Can be used to infer causality ** - meet all three of the causality criteria if done correctly: weaknesses. Artificial setting not necessarily representative of natural environment. Generalizability- taking empirical observations and concluding that your findings apply more broadly to people that are not in your study. Survey: investigating people by asking questions directly.
