Experiments

When sociologists wish to study a possible cause-and-effect relationship, they may conduct experi­ments. An experiment is an artificially created sit­uation which allows the researcher to manipulate variables and introduce control variables.

In the classic method of conducting an experi­ment, two groups of people are selected and com­pared for similar characteristics such as age or education. The subjects are then assigned by re­searchers to one of two groups—the experimen­tal or control group. The experimental group is exposed to an independent variable; the control group is not. Thus, if scientists were testing a new type of antibiotic drug, they would administer in­jections of that drug to an experimental group but not to a control group.

In response to rising concern about how to deal with the increased incidence of family violence, sociologists Lawrence Sherman and Richard Berk (1984) developed an experiment with the Minne­apolis police department to evaluate the desirabil­ity of three different responses by the police. Of­ficers called to the scene of a misdemeanor domestic assault were randomly instructed to

CHAPTER TWO ♦ METHODS OF SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Here, police are questioning a woman who has been the victim of domestic violence. Preliminary studies, such as an experiment conducted in Minneapolis, suggest that suspects who are arrested in domestic violence cases are less likely to be involved in such violence at a later date than suspects who are merely separated from the residence or offered counseling and mediation.

take one of the following actions: (1) arrest the alleged offender, (2) make the alleged offender leave the residence, thereby separating him or her from the person who had been attacked or threatened, or (3) offer some form of advice, counseling, or mediation. The researchers took a number of precautions and verified that the po­lice actually handled cases in a way called for by their experimental design. This sociological ex­periment did not have a control group, since the purpose was to determine which of the three al­ternative procedures would be most effective in deterring future domestic violence.

Sherman and Berk used two methods to estab­lish which of the three responses by the police was most effective. They checked police records for six months to see if a suspect's name appeared again in a case of domestic violence and also in­terviewed the original victims by telephone over a six-month period to learn if there had been a re­peat incident involving the same alleged of­fender. The clearest finding of this experimental study was that suspects who were arrested in domestic violence cases were less likely to be in­volved in such violence at a later date than sus­pects who were merely separated from the resi­dence or offered counseling and mediation. Suspects who had been arrested and temporarily jailed (usually for less than a week) were less likely to appear on police records over the next six months; when interviewed, the victims of their

original violence were less likely to report repeat incidents. Overall, jailing of a suspect was associ­ated with half as many follow-up cases of domes­tic violence as the other types of response were. Although there is need for further study of this subject, the use of an experiment led to dramatic results with practical applications.

Clearly, it is impossible for sociologists to ob­serve the behavior of all police officers handling cases of domestic violence. Yet such experiments can still be valuable, because they place "com-monsense" generalizations in a more proper con­text. Conducting sociological research is more difficult, and therefore more costly, in the field than in a laboratory setting (often on a college campus). Consequently, researchers sometimes must rely on samples composed entirely of col­lege students. Such participants may or may not be representative of the larger American public. There is an additional problem in using a labora­tory setting: the responses of subjects in such set­tings may be different from people's responses in less-structured, real-life situations.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-27