Natural Experiments - Advantages and disadvantages table in A Level and IB Psychology

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Created by: Nadia Khan
Created on: 23-04-14 09:44

Natural Experiments

Advantages

Ethical - it is possible to study variables that it would be unethical to manipulate

Disadvantages

Participant allocation - you can't randomly allocate participants to each condition, and so confounding variables may affect results.
Rare events - some groups of interest are hard to find
Ethics - deception is often used, making informed consent difficult. Also, confidentiality may be compromised if the community is identifiable.

Evaluation

A natural experiment is a study that measures variables that aren't directly manipulated by the experimenter.

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