Blootix Senior Member California. I think in English we call them experimenters, experimentors, or experimentators. OK, let's say that we're talking about a psychologist who conducts research into ape's self awareness. They leave red marks onto unconscious chimps' foreheads and later give them mirrors and check their reactions to the mark, and so forth.
For whatever reason, I don't want to call this social scientist a researcher. Should I call them an experimenter or or experimentator? How natural does it sound? Roach, J. Hartman neither of forms appear. It's very rare that we'd call someone an experimenter. Usually, we use "scientist" or "researcher. Physics Guy Senior Member U. But "experimenter" is a clear and okay word, meaning "one who experiments" at something. There are no other spellings in U. It sounds like ignorant language to a native speaker.
Physics Guy said:. I think that there is little practical use for "experimenters", etc. In general, I think that the discipline is mentioned, then "experimenting". As in: I am doing a study on e. I am experimenting with Alpha I in the lab to see if it is effective in controlling opportunistic fungi.
I don't think you would often hear: I am an experimenter on e. Learn more. Asked 6 years, 2 months ago. Active 6 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Improve this question. There are some instances of 'experimented scientist seems the most likely pairing! I am currently working as an experimented scientist on research projects and But as there are fewer than Google hits all told, I'd avoid this usage.
It might well catch on compare a 'published lecturer'. Funzo claims to be an "experimented scientist and astrologist.
Also, for some reason, Dr. Funzo scares the hell out of me. Like the experimented sailors in the philadelphia experiment? Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Bottom line: Don't use "experimented" to mean experienced. Improve this answer. Which OED? The modern usages seem to be from say the eighties. EdwinAshworth Paper, which predates the eighties. Which modern usages? Have a look at the two examples I've given, and others appearing in an "experimented scientist" Google search.
Perhaps some academic bodies don't like the connotations of 'experimental scientist', cf 'practising doctor'. For example, at many colleges and universities, there is a subject pool consisting of students enrolled in introductory psychology courses who must participate in a certain number of studies to meet a course requirement. Researchers post descriptions of their studies and students sign up to participate, usually via an online system. Participants who are not in subject pools can also be recruited by posting or publishing advertisements or making personal appeals to groups that represent the population of interest.
For example, a researcher interested in studying older adults could arrange to speak at a meeting of the residents at a retirement community to explain the study and ask for volunteers.
Even if the participants in a study receive compensation in the form of course credit, a small amount of money, or a chance at being treated for a psychological problem, they are still essentially volunteers. This is worth considering because people who volunteer to participate in psychological research have been shown to differ in predictable ways from those who do not volunteer. This difference can be an issue of external validity if there is reason to believe that participants with these characteristics are likely to behave differently than the general population.
For example, in testing different methods of persuading people, a rational argument might work better on volunteers than it does on the general population because of their generally higher educational level and IQ. In many field experiments, the task is not recruiting participants but selecting them.
A confederate walking down a stairway gazed directly at a shopper walking up the stairway and either smiled or did not smile. Shortly afterward, the shopper encountered another confederate, who dropped some computer diskettes on the ground. It is extremely important that this kind of selection be done according to a well-defined set of rules that is established before the data collection begins and can be explained clearly afterward.
In this case, with each trip down the stairs, the confederate was instructed to gaze at the first person he encountered who appeared to be between the ages of 20 and Only if the person gazed back did he or she become a participant in the study. The point of having a well-defined selection rule is to avoid bias in the selection of participants. For example, if the confederate was free to choose which shoppers he would gaze at, he might choose friendly-looking shoppers when he was set to smile and unfriendly-looking ones when he was not set to smile.
As we will see shortly, such biases can be entirely unintentional. It is surprisingly easy to introduce extraneous variables during the procedure.
For example, the same experimenter might give clear instructions to one participant but vague instructions to another. Or one experimenter might greet participants warmly while another barely makes eye contact with them.
If they vary across conditions, they become confounding variables and provide alternative explanations for the results. For example, if participants in a treatment group are tested by a warm and friendly experimenter and participants in a control group are tested by a cold and unfriendly one, then what appears to be an effect of the treatment might actually be an effect of experimenter demeanor. When there are multiple experimenters, the possibility for introducing extraneous variables is even greater, but is often necessary for practical reasons.
It is well known that whether research participants are male or female can affect the results of a study. But what about whether the experimenter is male or female?
There is plenty of evidence that this matters too. Male and female experimenters have slightly different ways of interacting with their participants, and of course participants also respond differently to male and female experimenters Rosenthal, [3].
Male participants tolerated the pain longer when the experimenter was a woman, and female participants tolerated it longer when the experimenter was a man. This outcome is referred to as an experimenter expectancy effect Rosenthal, [5]. For example, if an experimenter expects participants in a treatment group to perform better on a task than participants in a control group, then he or she might unintentionally give the treatment group participants clearer instructions or more encouragement or allow them more time to complete the task.
In a striking example, Rosenthal and Kermit Fode had several students in a laboratory course in psychology train rats to run through a maze. But how? Some clues come from data gathered at the end of the study, which showed that students who expected their rats to learn quickly felt more positively about their animals and reported behaving toward them in a more friendly manner e.
The way to minimize unintended variation in the procedure is to standardize it as much as possible so that it is carried out in the same way for all participants regardless of the condition they are in.
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