Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Research Design: Experiments and Experimental Thinking 143
first condition, when they thought the crime was for a government agency and
that they’d be free of danger from prosecution if caught. What do you suppose
would happen to your sense of self-worth when you were finally debriefed and
told that you were one of the 36 out of 80 (45%) who agreed to participate in
the burglary in the first condition? (See Cook [1975] for a critical comment
on the ethics of this experiment.)
The key ethical issue in the conduct of all social research is whether those
being studied are placed at risk by those doing the studying. This goes for field
research—including surveys, ethnographies, and naturalistic experiments—as
much as it does for laboratory studies. All universities in the United States
have long had Institutional Review Boards, or IRBs. These are internal agencies
whose members review and pass judgment on the ethical issues associated
with all research on people, including biomedical and psychosocial. The
concept of informed consent has developed and matured over the years. All
researchers are asked by the IRBs to describe clearly and precisely what steps
will be taken to ensure that people who participate in research will be protected
from harm. And not just physical harm. Research participants should
not experience emotional harm or financial harm, either.
Factorial Designs: Main Effects and Interaction Effects
Most experiments involve analyzing the effects of several independent variables
at once. A factorial design lays out all the combinations of all the categories
of the independent variables. That way you know how many participants
you need, how many to assign to each condition, and how to run the
analysis when the data are in.
It is widely believed that a good laugh has healing power. Rotton and Shats
(1996) developed an experimental design to test this. They recruited 39 men
and 39 women who were scheduled for orthopedic surgery. The patients were
assigned randomly to one of nine groups—eight experimental groups and one
control group. The patients in the eight treatment groups got to watch a movie
in their room the day after their surgery.
There were three variables: choice, humor, and expectancy. The participants
in the high-choice group got a list of 20 movies from which they chose
four. The participants in the low-choice group watched a movie that one of the
people in the high-choice group had selected. Half the participants watched
humorous movies, and half watched action or adventure movies. Before
watching their movie, half the participants read an article about the benefits
of humor, while half read an article about the healthful benefits of exciting
movies.