Field experiment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A field experiment applies the scientific method to experimentally examine an intervention in the real world (or as many experimentalists like to say, naturally occurring environments) rather than in the laboratory. Field experiments, like lab experiments, generally randomize subjects (or other sampling units) into treatment and control groups and compare outcomes between these groups. Field experiments are 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. Often used in the social sciences, and especially in economic analyses of education and health interventions, field experiments have the advantage that outcomes are observed in a natural setting rather than in a contrived laboratory environment. For this reason, field experiments are sometimes seen as having higher external validity than laboratory experiments. However, like natural experiments, field experiments suffer from the possibility of contamination: experimental conditions can be controlled with more precision and certainty in the lab. Yet some phenomena (e.g., voter turnout in an election) cannot be easily studied in a laboratory.
Examples include:
- Clinical trials of pharmaceuticals are one example of field experiments.
- Economists have used field experiments to analyze discrimination, health care programs, charitable fundraising, education, information aggregation in markets, and microfinance programs.
- Engineers often conduct field tests of prototype products to validate earlier laboratory tests and to obtain broader feedback.
See also
