TOPICS APPROPRIATE TO EXPERIMENTS

    As I've indicated earlier, social research focuses on understanding how variables operate in human social life.  The particular strength of experiements lies in being able to focus on specific variables while holding the impact of other variables in check.

    Experiments are particularly well suited to hypothesis-testing in the deductive model.  As we'll see later in the course, the experimental model is often used in evaluation research.  If the researcher wants to know whether a particular intervention will have some desirable effect (e.g., reducing prejudice or juvenile delinquency), an experiment can sort out the impact of the intervention from other variables.

    Experiments are also well-suited to the study of small groups, though we'll see that the experimental model can be simulated in the study of real-life events--called natural experiments.