Question

Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of experimental method as a method of enquiry.

Answer 1

Experimental method is aimed at discovering causal relationship between various factors by manipulating the situation under totally controlled conditions.

Characterstics: 

• Experimental involves manipulation of variables to study their effect on other aspects.

• Experiments are carried out in totally controlled condition.

• Sunjects or individuals are assigned to experimental and control group randomly.

Advantages: 

• It can be performed at any time.

• It is very objective - No personal bias exists.

• Replication and verification of obtained result is possible.

Limitations: 

• Experimental are conducted in a very artificial and unrealistic situations- the setting is not natural.

• They lack external validity i.e generalisability. Since they are not done in natural settings, the results cannot be generalized with confidence.

• It is difficult to control and know all extraneous variables like motivation, emotion, state etc.

 

Experimental method is aimed at discovering causal relationship between various factors by manipulating the situation under totally controlled conditions.