- Tytuł:
- Eksperyment w badaniach społecznych
- Autorzy:
- Sułek, Antoni
- Powiązania:
-
https://bibliotekanauki.pl/books/1796173.zip
https://bibliotekanauki.pl/books/1796173.pdf
https://bibliotekanauki.pl/books/1796173.mobi
https://bibliotekanauki.pl/books/1796173.epub - Data publikacji:
- 1979
- Wydawca:
- Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN
- Opis:
- EXPERIMENT IN SOCIAL RESEARCH SUMMARY The book attempts at answers to four questions: 1. What is the specific character of experiment and its value for empirical sciences and in particular for social research? 2. What are the forms of experiment in social research? 3. What are the restrictions set on the application of experiment to the research on social phenomena? 4. How social sciences manage the above mentioned restrictions? The book consists of four parts each giving an answer to succeeding questions. 1 Part I begins with the description of the very concept of experiment. The author defines experiment as a repeatable manipulation consisting in a planned change of some factors of the situation under investigation introduced by the researcher along with his control of other factors made in order to get an answer — in the course of observation — as to the effects of the change. The author discusses the functions of experiment i.e. the superior goals it serves. The author’s attention is focused on the verification of causal hypotheses as due to this function experiment is so highly respected. The author gives thus the definition of the causal hypothesis itself and formulates three requirements of the causal proof: ascertainment of the co-occurrence of the events involved, determination of the temporal order and elimination of the alternative to the hypothetical cause explanations of the effect occurrence. The author shows how easily experiment helps to get all these kinds of evidence. Other functions of experiment are shown as well: the heuristic and the diagnostic ones. Particular advantages of experiment are revealed. Besides the facility of verification of the causal hypotheses the author mentions such features as the increase of experience, improvement of the quality of observation and this of the description of phenomena, ingenious linking of theory with empirical data and the especially effective realization of the postulate of intersubjective control of scientific research. Due to these functions and advantages experiment has become one of the most powerful mainsprings of the development of natural sciences. A short outline of the experiment history is given here in order to show the course it has taken before its application in social research. The analysis of experiment presented in this part of the book is mostly of a generally methodological character — it pertains also to the natural sciences. It may therefore serve as the background against which the specific nature of experiment in social research will appear the more evident. 2 In part II the author gives an exposition of the experimental designs and procedures in social research. He formulates three essential requirements of the validity of experiment used for the verification of the causal hypothesis: theoretical validity, internal and external ones. The exposition of the designs and procedures is meant to show how various designs and procedures assure the above mentioned kinds of validity of experiments. The author considers in the first place the question of translation of theoretical hypotheses into operational hypotheses formulated in the language of treatments and experimental responses. Dangers of manifold theoretical interpretation of the experiment results are emphasized and various methods assuring valid operationalization of the experimental variable are described as well as those of the effective introduction of treatments to the systems under investigation. Furthermore the author discusses — following Campbell — extraneous factors which may disturb the effect of the treatment and render thereby the evaluation of its real influence difficult. The author writes here of instability, history, maturation, testing, statistical regression, instrumentation (instrument decay), selection and mortality. The control of these disturbances ensures the internal validity of experiment. Some factors which the external validity of experiment depends on i.e. the generalizability of its results are also considered. Only two of these factors are analysed in this part, namely the interaction of testing and treatment and the carry over effect. Next, a broad survey of experimental designs is presented based essentially on Campbell and Stanley’s work Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. These designs are derived from Mill’s tradition, they are various modifications of the classical design and usually are designs of one treatment considered as a bivalent one in most cases. Multivariate designs originating from Fisher are discussed as well. They enable research on simultaneous influence of many variables, on influence of multivalent variables and on the concurrent influence of many multivalent variables. Different methods of group selection in experiments are presented. These designs are illustrated by experiments on the change of attitudes and those on the functioning of organizations, both in field and in laboratory conditions. A separate chapter is devoted to social experiments conceived as controlled tests of social change made on a limited scale. The author discusses here in turn the concept of social experiment itself and this of experimental social innovation, the character of hypotheses tested in research of this kind, problems connected with the introduction, control, measure and evaluation of the effects of the experimental innovations and the possible benefits of social experimentation to practice and science; the difficulties it is supposed to meet with are mentioned as well. The characterization of social experiment is given in such a way as to show that it is a transposition of the ideas and methodology of the laboratory experiment and in field experiment to the area of vital and essential practical problems. 3 Part III is devoted to the answer to the question why experiment in social research is applied on such a small scale in spite of its being such an excellent method? The author points out to three kinds of hindrances standing in the way of experimentation in social research. Technical hindrances lay in the impossibility of provoking and changing phenomena. Due to the historical character of many social phenomena any manipulation with them is unfeasible just as they do not exist anymore and what is left to the researcher is only the inference based on sources. The involvement of social phenomena in more larger structures causes that quite a number of these phenomena cannot be manipulated with without a concurrent change of whole structures. Research workers, men of science and not those of power, have enough authority only to manipulate with small groups formed in an artificial way at that. Many social processes are of a long-range character and even if a researcher were in a position to provoke their occurrence the observation of their whole course would take too long a time. Much of the conceivable experiments are forbidden by the prevalent systems of values: ideology, ethics, law. These systems raise three obstacles which experiment must not trespass at all or, when doing so, it has to risk to raise the question of axiological ambiguity. No immediately harmful treatment is allowed as well as no treatment inducing harmful consequences, and the very manipulation with people regardless of consequences is dubious from the moral point of view. The last question is discussed at large by the author who illustrates it by examples of deception experiments. Ideological hindrances in the application of social experiments are also discussed here: some social systems do not allow any such attempts fearing they might disturb their balance. Another obstacle in the use of experiment is the limited value of the extrapolation of the results of research on experimental situations on the so called real-life situations. Considering the reasons of the different behaviour of the subjects in both types of situations the author is of the opinion that they are to be found in the peculiarities of the psychosocial situation of experimental research, in singularities of certain type of experimental groups, namely the laboratory ones and, last but not least, in the nature of the experimental method itself consisting among others in deliberate simplification of complex real-life situations. The discussion of the above mentioned problems is based on the results of the American research on psychosocial situation of experiment. The author discusses here the legitimacy of objections raised to the artificial character of situations and results of experiment and he shows what interpretation makes this objection valid and when it is pointless. Most especially he emphasizes the fact that the insignificant value of the effects of experiment is due not to the simplified character of situations under examination but to the lack of theoretical knowledge enabling the transposition of conditions created by the researcher on the so called real ones. 4 The last part of the work is devoted to the methods by means of which social sciences try to overcome the above mentioned obstacles. Three groups of such means may be singled out: the improvement of present experimental techniques and the elaboration of new ones, non-experimental research and substituted experiments on models of systems not open to immediate experiment. The first group has been discussed in several paragraphs of the present work, the second is too far removed from the subject matter of this discussion and so the author centres on the third group — the model experiments. He gives a general methodological characterization of model as such then he applies it to the analysis of the experiments in which the non-manipulated great social structures are replaced by small groups and people out of reach of some manipulations are replaced by any. In the paragraph regarding model experiments on small groups the author shows in what consists the better accessibility of small groups to the experiment and points out advantages of research of this kind. Such experiments are the source of macrosociological hypotheses and they provide legitimation for such theories, they are also helpful in the formulation of fragments of the general theory of social systems. The author determines the requisites which have to be met in order to assure the validity of extrapolations from the small group level on the great structures level. Furthermore, the author discusses advantages and assumptions of psychosocial experiments on children undertaken with the intention to throw some light on the behaviour of mature individuals and those of the ones made on abnormal individuals aiming at the knowledge of behaviour of normal people. In the chapter discussing experiments on animals the author shows — just as he has done in the previous chapter — the reasons why it is more easy to experiment on animals than on human beings, the benefits of experiments on animals for sciences of human behaviour, assumptions which nave to be realized in order to get those benefits as well as limitations of such experiments and critical trends. Concluding, the author expresses the opinion that potentialities of experimentation in social sciences are still unsufticiently taken advantage of. It is not only the inaccessible and complex social reality and the danger of its turning artificial when touched that are discouraging. Just the same part is played with much success by the insufficient knowledge of the subject matter and of methodology. There is only one solution to the problem — more research and experimental research as well.
- Dostawca treści:
- Biblioteka Nauki
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