Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
64,053
result(s) for
"Social sciences Experiments."
Sort by:
Laboratory experiments in the social sciences
Laboratory Experiments in the Social Sciences is the only book providing core information for researchers about the ways and means to conduct experiments.Its comprehensive regard for laboratory experiments encompasses \"how-to explanations, investigations of philosophies and ethics, explorations of experiments in specific social science.
eBook
The Association Between Utility of Learning Resources, Class Attendance, Statistical Self-Efficacy, Mathematics Competence and Statistics Anxiety among Undergraduate Students
Statistics anxiety is recognised as a major challenge facing students at all academic levels. It particularly affects their performance in statistics and research methods courses. This study investigates changes in students’ statistics anxiety based on the perceived utility of learning resources and class attendance within an introductory statistics course. Through the application of social cognition theory, we also examine the role of previous performance in mathematics, perceived competence in mathematics, and statistical self-efficacy as contributors to statistics anxiety. A quasi-experimental approach was used with undergraduate students completing a survey at the start and end of an introductory statistics course. Paired sample t-tests indicated a significant reduction in statistics anxiety. Additionally, Pearson correlation points to negative correlations between posttest statistics anxiety scores, perceived competence in mathematics, and statistical self-efficacy. Using hierarchical regression, class attendance was found to predict posttest statistics anxiety, with the smaller classes having a greater impact on statistics anxiety. These findings highlight the need for further interrogation of the role of class size and classroom activities with explorations of how these may reduce students’ statistics anxieties.
Journal Article
Improving debriefing practices for participants in social science experiments
Abstract
Social science experiments often expose participants to false, deceptive, or otherwise harmful content. In an effort to mitigate the effects of such content and to comply with regulatory standards, these studies usually conclude by “debriefing” participants about the content they encountered, on the assumption that doing so will eliminate the effects of exposure. We present evidence showing that this assumption is not always correct. After standard debriefs, participants who have seen political misinformation often remain worse-informed than if they had never been exposed to misinformation in the first place. We then design and test a new approach to debriefing, which entails (i) debriefing as soon after exposure to harmful content as possible; (ii) providing an informative correction; and (iii) requiring participants to affirm that they have been exposed to false information. Across multiple experiments, we show that this approach is far superior to standard debriefs at reducing the effects of false or harmful content on political attitudes and beliefs. Our approach makes it possible to study the effects of false or harmful content on attitudes and beliefs without posing significant risks to participants.
Journal Article
The Principles of Experimental Design and Their Application in Sociology
In light of an increasing interest in experimental work, we provide a review of some of the general issues involved in the design of experiments and illustrate their relevance to sociology and to other areas of social science of interest to sociologists. We provide both an introduction to the principles of experimental design and examples of influential applications of design for different types of social science research. Our aim is twofold: to provide a foundation in the principles of design that may be useful to those planning experiments and to provide a critical overview of the range of applications of experimental design across the social sciences.
Journal Article
Experimental practices and objectivity in the social sciences
The experimental revolution in the social sciences is one of the most significant methodological shifts undergone by the field since the ‘quantitative revolution’ in the nineteenth century. One of the often valued features of social science experimentation is precisely the fact that there are (alleged) clear methodological rules regarding hypothesis testing that come from the methods of the natural sciences and from the methodology of RCTs in the biomedical sciences, and that allow for the adjudication among contentious causal claims. We examine critically this claim and argue that some current understandings of the practices that surround social science experimentation overestimate the degree to which experiments can actually fulfil this role as “objective” adjudicators, by neglecting the importance of shared background knowledge or assumptions and of consensus regarding the validity of the constructs involved in an experiment. We take issue with the way the distinction between internal and external validity is often used to comment on the inferential import of experiments, used both among practitioners and among philosophers of science. We describe the ways in which the more common (dichotomous) use of the internal/external distinction differs from Cook and Campbell’s original methodological project, in which construct validity and the four-fold validity typology were all important in assessing the inferential import of experiments. We argue that the current uses of the labels internal and external, as applied to experimental validity, help to encroach a simplistic view on the inferential import of experiments that, in turn, misrepresents their capacity to provide objective knowledge about the causal relations between variables.
Journal Article
Black and White discrimination in the United States: Evidence from an archive of survey experiment studies
This study reports results from a new analysis of 17 survey experiment studies that permitted assessment of racial discrimination, drawn from the archives of the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. For White participants (n=10 435), pooled results did not detect a net discrimination for or against White targets, but, for Black participants (n=2781), pooled results indicated the presence of a small-to-moderate net discrimination in favor of Black targets; inferences were the same for the subset of studies that had a political candidate target and the subset of studies that had a worker or job applicant target. These results have implications for understanding racial discrimination in the United States, and, given that some of the studies have never been fully reported on in a journal or academic book, the results also suggest the need for preregistration to reduce or eliminate publication bias in racial discrimination studies.
Journal Article
Independent AI Ethics Committees and ESG Corporate Reporting on AI as Emerging Corporate and AI Governance Trends
Innovation lies at the heart of all thriving civilizations. While freedom to innovate and free markets are often viewed as paramount, a line is universally drawn when it comes to research and experimentation on human subjects. The 1978 Belmont Report outlined three ethical principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. These principles have formed the basis of human science research worldwide, including non‐clinical behavioural and social science experiments. However, Independent Human Research Review Committees and their regulation have difficulty grappling with internet research ethics, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) research, as demonstrated by controversies surrounding the 2014 Facebook Emotional Contagion study and 2016 “AI gaydar” research. International Organization of Securities Commissions recently recommended that Issuers and other regulated entities should integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG)‐specific issues, where these are material, in the overall risk assessment and governance of these entities, including at the Board level.
Book Chapter
Near Human
Near Human takes us into the borders of human and animal
life. In the animal facility, fragile piglets substitute
for humans who cannot be experimented on. In the neonatal intensive
care unit, extremely premature infants prompt questions about
whether they are too fragile to save or, if they survive, whether
they will face a life of severe disability. Drawing on ethnographic
fieldwork carried out on farms, in animal-based experimental
science labs, and in hospitals, Mette N. Svendsen shows that
practices of substitution redirect the question of \"what it means\"
to be human to \"what it takes\" to be human. The near humanness of
preterm infants and research piglets becomes an avenue to unravel
how neonatal life is imagined, how societal belonging is evaluated,
and how the Danish welfare state is forged. This courageous
multi-sited and multi-species approach cracks open the complex
ethical field of valuating life and making different kinds of pigs
and different kinds of humans belong in Denmark.
eBook
Double Exposure
Double Exposure examines the role of film in shaping
social psychology's landmark postwar experiments. We are told that
most of us will inflict electric shocks on a fellow citizen when
ordered to do so. Act as a brutal prison guard when we put on a
uniform. Walk on by when we see a stranger in need. But there is
more to the story. Documentaries that investigators claimed as
evidence were central to capturing the public imagination. Did they
provide an alibi for twentieth century humanity? Examining the
dramaturgy, staging and filming of these experiments, including
Milgram's Obedience Experiments, the Stanford Prison Experiment and
many more, Double Exposure recovers a new set of
narratives.
eBook