Question

When looking at psychological research, it is generally thought that experimental research methods provide the best tool for conducting research. However, some research illustrates that correlational studies and other descriptive methods provide an equally important opportunity for conducting research. After completing this week's readings, discuss the benefits and disadvantages of using an experimental design. In your discussion, be sure to examine how the different research procedures might help to convey results to different audiences. For example, would observational data be easier for individuals outside of research to understand? Or would experimental data provide more easy-to-understand information because it examines a direct cause–effect relationship? Given what you have presented, do you think that experimental research is the gold standard? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Experimental research method is a method in which researchers systematically alter one or more variables in order to determine whether such changes influence some aspects of behaviour.

In its most basic forms, the experimental method in psychology involves two key steps: 1. The presence or strength of some variable believed to affect behaviour is systematically altered and to the effects of such alteration are carefully measured. The logic behind these steps are: If the variables that is systematically changed does not indeed influence some aspects of behaviour, than individuals exposed to different levels or amounts of that factor should differ in their behaviour.

Experimental method is supposed to be the crown jewel among psychologists and it is highly valued. One reason is that the other methods do indeed offer advantages like survey method, but this method is more reliable. The other methods are not more reliable because there is high generalabilitt. The reason is that in many cases, practical and ethical constraints present psychologists from using experimentation. For instance, suppose a psychologist believed that painting school buses a colour different from the one widely used now (yellow) would make them more visible and so reduce accident. In this case many others psychologists can imagine useful experiments but cannot conduct them because of practical constraints.

The the main disadvantage of the experimental method is that the results can be subject to several sources of bias (i.g., experimenter effect); generalizability can be doubtful if behaviour is observed under highly artificial conditions.