6.9 Field experiments: Basics

  • “experimentally examine an intervention in the real world […] rather than in the laboratory […] generally randomize subjects […] so named in order to draw a contrast with laboratory experiments, which enforce scientific control by testing a hypothesis in the artificial and highly controlled setting of a laboratory.” (Wikipedia)
  • Q: Advantages and disadvantages of this design?
  • Q: Gerber and Green (2011, 359) mention the classification of Harrison and List (2004, 1014) that differentiates between “artefactual”, “framed” and “natural” field experiments. What do they mean by these?31

References

Gerber, Alan S, and Donald P Green. 2011. “Field Experiments and Natural Experiments.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, edited by Robert E Goodin.

  1. “Artefactual” field experiments are similar to laboratory experiments, except that they involve a “non-standard” subject pool, e.g., run a a lab experiment with subjects in a remote African village; “Framed” field experiments are artefactual experiments that also involve a realistic task such as sixty-nine congessional staffers that are asked to make simulated scheduling decisions to detect whether scheduling preference is given to groups associated with a political action committee; “natural” field experiments unobtrusively assess the effects of realistic treatments on subjects who would ordinarily be exposed to them, typically using behavioral outcome measures, such as assigning newspaper subscriptions to voters and investigate impact on their political attitudes; (Gerber and Green 2011, 359)↩