Читать книгу Methods in Psychological Research - Annabel Ness Evans - Страница 47

The distinction between field and laboratory research highlights a difference of control. In the laboratory, researchers may have total control over most variables, whereas in the field, they may have difficulty controlling even a few. The control afforded by laboratory research makes it more likely that you will detect a treatment effect or a relationship between variables. But the artificiality of the laboratory may mean that your results do not generalize to the real world. On the other hand, there is nothing artificial about research in the field, but your lack of control of variables may mean that you do not obtain significant results. The decision to conduct research in the laboratory or in the field is a trade-off, then, among artificiality (high in the lab, low in the field), control over variables (high in the lab, low in the field), and generalizability (low in the lab, high in the field).

We have discussed why researchers do what they do and the general approaches taken by researchers in the social sciences. Regardless of the approach that a researcher takes, the process of planning and conducting research follows a logical series of steps.