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EXPERIMENTS (Artificial/ Laboratory Experiments: (The Hypothetico…
EXPERIMENTS
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The Comparative Method:
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Durkheim (1897): Suicide
- Durkheim’s study ‘Suicide (1897)’ is a famous example of the comparative method in action.
- Durkheim hypothesised that low levels of social integration was causally linked to suicide rates (Protestants less integrated than Catholics)
- As a response to the interpretivist criticism of artificial experiments (Particularly in relation to the idea that people are subjective & unpredictable), Positivists have developed the comparative method that tries to remove the ‘human element’ out of the research yet retains the principles of scientific experiments.
- This involves the study of two / multiple ‘data sets’ that are similar except for one or two variables (IVs).
- These could involve 2 groups of people (like in an artificial experiment) however usually uses Official Statistics.
- These similar data sets/ groups are compared to see if the different IV/s make any difference.