Quantitative Research Across Discipline

Quantitative Research and Anthropology

Bernard (1994) says that there are five steps to follow in conducting true experiments with people:

1. You need at least two groups, called the treatment group (or the invention group or the stimulus
group) and the control group. One group gets the invention ( a new drug, for example), and the
other group ( the control group doesn’t ).
2. Individuals must be randomly assigned, either to the intervention group or to the control group
to ensure that the groups are equivalent. Some individuals in a population may be more
religious, or more wealthy, or less sickly, or more prejudiced than others, but random
assignment ensures that those traits are randomly distributed through the groups in an
experiment. The degree to which randomization ensures equivalence, however depends on the
size of the groups created. With random assignment, two groups of 50 are more equivalent than
four groups of 25.
3. The groups are measured on one or more dependent variables (income, infant mortality,
attitude toward abortion knowledge of curing techniques, or other things you hope to change by
the intervention); this is called the pretest.
4. The intervention (the independent variable) is introduced.
5. The dependent variables are measured again. This is the posttest.

True Experiments in the Lab

Bernard further says that true experiments with people are common in laboratory experiments
and in the testing of new medicines. Laboratory experiments often produce results that beg to
be tested in the natural world by anthropologists. Aaron an Mills (1959, as cited in Bernard,
1994) demonstrated in a lab experiment that people who go through a mild initiation to a group
tend to be more positive toward the group than tough initiation rites put a lot of personal
investments into getting into the group. Later if people see evidence that the group is not what
they thought it will be, they are reluctant to admit the fact because of the investment.

True Experiments in the Field

When they are done outside the lab, experiments are called field experiments. Janet Schofield
and her colleagues did a 3-year ethnographic study of a middle school. During the first year, they
noticed African-American and white children seemed to react differently to “ mildly aggressive
acts”- things like bumping in the hallway, poking one another in the classroom, asking for food,
or using another students pencil without permission. There appeared to be no event of racial
conflict in the school, but during interviews white students were more likely to report being
intimidated by their African-American peers than vice versa (Sagar & Schofield, 1980, as cited in
Bernard, 1994)

Quasi-experiments
Quasi-experiments are most often used in evaluating social programs. Suppose a researcher has
invented a technique for improving reading comprehension among third graders. She/he selects
two third-grade classes in school district. One of them gets the intervention and the other
doesn’t. Students are measured before and after the intervention to see whether their reading
scores improve. This design contains many of the elements of a true experiment, but the
participants are not assigned randomly to the treatment and control groups. (Bernard 1994).

The One-Shot Case Study or One-Group Posttest Only Design

In the one-shot case study design, a single group of individuals is measured on some dependent
variable after an intervention has taken place. The researcher tries to evaluate the experiment
by interviewing people (O) and trying to assess the impact of the intervention (X). The problem,
of course, is that you can’t be sure that what you observe is the result of some particular
intervention. In the 1950s, physicians began general use of the Pap Test, a simple procedure for
determining the presence of cervical cancer. Following the introduction of the Pop Test,
measurements were made for several years to see if there was any effect. Sure enough, cervical
cancer rates dropped and dropped. Later, it was noticed that cervical cancer rates had been
dropping steadily