Example Answer for Question 1 Paper 2: AS Sociology, June 2017 (AQA)

Question 1: Outline [4 marks] - Lab Experiments

The Hawthorne effect - When people know they are being studied they behave differently. Since the laboratory setting is not authentic, participants would know the situation was not true-to-life and respond by acting in a socially desirable way.

Lack of control over variables – It would be impossible to identify, let alone control all the differences between individual participants. To attempt to control these would take longer and reduce sample size.

Please Note: These answers have been produced without the knowledge of the mark scheme and merely reflect our attempt at producing an example answer on the day of the exam. Naturally, there are many different possible answers to this questions and students should not worry if their answer is different to ours. These answers are not approved or endorsed by AQA.