experimental design, whose basic principles are rather simple, is elegant
and if applied in good ways, can be very informative as to data, variables
and their impact, etc.
but, please hold on for a moment
when it comes to humans, we have developed some social policies that say:
1. experimental procedures should not harm Ss ... nor pose any unnecessary risk
2. Ss should be informed about what it is they are being asked to
participate in as far as experiments are concerned
3. Ss are THE ones to make the decision about participation or not (except
in cases of minors ... we allocate that decision to guardians/parents)
you aren't suggesting, are you, that for the sake of knowledge, we should
abandon these principles?
so you see, there are serious restrictions (and valid ones at that) when it
comes to doing experiments with humans ...
for so much of human behavior and things we would like to explore, we are
unable to "do experiments" ... it is that plain and simple
yes, while we may be able to gather data on many of these variables of
interest in other ways ... we are rarely if EVER in the position of being
able to say with any causative assurance (since we did not experimentally
manipulate things) that when we do X, Y happens
208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the
problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
