Social Research Design Week 9: Experiments

Overview of the Chapter

    Welcome to Week 9 of Sociology 201 online.  In this unit of the course, we are going to begin our examination of the different ways in which social researchers make observations, or collect data. This unit deals with experiments.

    The discussions and activities of this unit are linked to Chapter 8 of The Practice of Social Research. To preview the topics contained in Chapter 8, click here.  You can click on any of the major headings for a brief overview of that topic.  You might want to read the overview prior to reading that section of the chapter and/or read the overview after the chapter to make sure you got what you were supposed to get from it.

    Your tasks for completing this first unit of the course are to:

(1) Preview and read Chapter 8,
(2) View the presentations provided below, and

Experiments are particularly good for testing causal relationships. Click here for a presentation on how the classical experimental model relates to the proof of causation.

The experimental model aims, in large part, at eliminating a number of problems of internal invalidity. Click here for a review of that topic.