| field experiments | carried out in natural/everyday setting. manipulable IV |
| natural experiments | Situational factors such as people who have broken a bone (naturally occurring IV). does not manipulate IV. controlled/natural setting |
| Quasi experiments | Naturally occurring IV. Participant factors (e.g age or gender). controlled/natural setting. doesn't manipulate IV |
| lab experiments | experiment carried out in a special environment where variables can be controlled (doesn't necessarily have to be a lab).
Manipulate IV |
| 4 advantages of lab experiments | control of extraneous variables
can establish cause and effect
good internal reliability
replicable |
| 5 disadvantages of lab experiments | demand characteristics
no mundane realism
no generalisability
fake setting
low external validity |
| advantages of field experiment | better generalizability
no demand characteristics
mundane realism
good ecological validity because of authentic behaviour due to ppts being unaware of being studied |
| disadvantages of field experiment | bad internal reliability
bad external reliability
cant establish cause and effect
unethical because they cannot get consent
extraneous varaibles |
| advantages of natural experiment | we can find out about topics and cases we can't see or study otherwise
high external validity |
| disadvantages of natural experiment | rare cases mean that you may not be able to find a large enough sample size depending on the strata
low generalizability
risk of confounding variables due to rare cases not being exactly the same/perfectly controlled |
| advantages of quasi experiment | easy to collect ppts
in controlled conditions- better external validity |
| disadvantages of quasi experiment | confounding variables
no control
cannot randomly split ppts because IV is pre decided (e.g boys and girls) |
