Discussion:
Survey and Experimental Methods (Social Psychology)
Instructions:
In a 2-3 paragraphs that compares survey strategies of inquiry with experimental strategies of inquiry.
1. Explain how survey and experimental methods---including components, terminology, elements, statistics, etc.-are similar and different.
2. Determine which kinds of research questions would be served by a survey or an experimental method.
3. Examine the reasons why reliability and validity are important in research.
- Generalize about how popular quantitative methods are in your discipline.
I would like to expand on this topic: A survey design provides a quantitative or numeric description of trends, attitudes or opinions of a population by studying a sample of that population. The basic intent of an experimental design is to test the impact (or an intervention on an outcome, controlling for all other factors that might influence that outcome.