Note
Natural experiments The concept of a "natural experiment" relates to a situation in which it is possible to closely-observe people's behaviour as they go about their everyday lives. An example here might be for a researcher to live amongst the people they wanted to study (a method known as participant observation). Eileen Barker ("The Making of a Moonie") classically used this method in order to observe the behaviour of a religious group. With natural experiments it is not possible to control the conditions under which the observation of behaviour takes place with the same level of control as a laboratory experiment, but one argument in its favour is the fact that the researcher can observe people in a natural, rather than artificial ("the laboratory") setting. Other forms of natural experiment might involve analysing official statistics across a range of different societies to see if patterns of behaviour are present. Emile Durkheim, for example, used this method as the basis for his classic study of suicide ("Suicide: A Study in Sociology", 1897). |