What is the difference between field studies and laboratory studies

In fact, which research is more preferable? Lab research is referring to the research which is done inside the lab. They set up experiments and do tests inside the controlled environment i. On the other hand, field research is usually carried out when psychologists are researching on the topics associated with people. It is quite useful to psychologists when they want to obtain massive responses from people.

In fact, these two types of research have different advantages and disadvantages. In the opposite, field research enables the psychologists to obtain data from our daily world. After analyzing the data, however, the finding will be less reliable than those done by the lab researchers as there are maybe lots of elements that contribute to that result. And hence may lead to a similar confusion between correlation and causation.

To conclude, lab research and field research specialize at different fields. When psychologists are doing topics like brain and mind, or simply want to test the responses from brain, they should do the lab research as it can provide them a precise finding. They can get the direct feedback from people, though it might be less reliable, but its finding would be more realistic than those experiment done in an artificial environment. Lab research and field experiments should not be used for different theories in psychology as you said but to show a theory in different ways.

For example Langer and Rodin showed in a field experiment that increased control could improve the health of residents of the Arden House a 4 floor old age nursing home. However these results could have been caused by some other confounding variable like experimenter bias.

A laboratory experiment could have been used to show the physical change when a person is given more control but could not have shown the change over a large amount of time which a field experiment could show.

So both should be used for the same theory in order to further justify the application of the theory. Similarities Both are types of experiment, therefore can have high control over confounding variables, and thus may have high internal validity. Due to the potential amount of high control, experiments are the only way in which causality can accurately be produced. So, both laboratory and field experiments allow for cause and effect to be found, which makes them both useful.

Both involve the manipulation of an independent variable to measure the effect on the dependent variable. This gives them some shared advantages, such as the aforementioned causality, and control, but also some disadvantages, such as limiting the number of areas you can research as some things practically cannot be manipulated, such as psychological illness , and raising ethical issues into some areas of research such as in the Stanford Prison Experiment, which caused psychological and physical unnecessary harm to its participants.

Differences Laboratory experiments are conducted in an artificial setting, and therefore have low ecological validity e. The control condition representing that present at current stadium environments was significantly worse in all scenarios see Table 2. Table 2 also indicates that in terms of the impact on user experience, neither user nor system-initiated personalisation emerged as a single best approach across the range of tasks studied.

The experiment recorded approximately 18 hours of video during the lab study. In general, participants considered the user interface of both personalized mobile prototypes easy to use.

The laboratory study was relatively easy to undertake and collect data from. During the lab study, participants quickly revealed considerable information about how a spectator uses the prototypes.

The lab environment also offered more control over the conditions for the experiment. In comparison to the field study, participants were more focused on the experiment being undertaken, and were not influenced by external factors, such as weather, noise, or others disturbances from the sporting environment. There were some drawbacks to the lab experiment, including only a limited representation of the real world, and greater uncertainty over the degree of generalization of results outside laboratory settings.

As a result, participants were able to identify some context related problems e. In addition, participants expressed their concerns with using the personalized prototypes from contextual and social perspectives, including concerns over spending too much time personalizing the device during the event, and therefore actually missing some of the sporting action. The lab experiment did not allow users to feel relaxed during the experimental procedure.

Participants acted more politely during the study, and they pointed out that they were uncomfortable about expressing negative feelings about the applications. In one example, when interviewing a participant about aspects of his user experience, he generally stated that it was fine.

However, when presented with the Emotion Cards a group of cartoon faces that were used to help promote discussion of affective aspects of interaction , he tended to pick up one emotion card and talked a lot about concerns over the time and effort required to manually personalize the application, without feeling that he was being overly critical.

This research enabled a comparison between field and laboratory experiments, based on similar users, mobile applications, and task-based scenarios. In particular, a similar user-initiated prototype was used in each, even though the field experiment took place at a football competition, and the lab experiment recreated an athletics meeting. The number of usability problems identified during both the field and lab experiments was similar over all participants, when using the user-initiated prototype, there were 35 usability problems identified in the field setting, and 42 found in the lab setting.

These findings are consistent with those of Kjeldskov et al. They specifically compared lab and field-based usability results and found that the difference in effectiveness of these two approaches was nonsignificant in identifying most usability problems. Also, some context related problems, such as the font being too small to read in an open stadium, were identified in both experiment settings.

However, some key differences in the effectiveness of the field and laboratory approaches were found; the lab experiment identified problems related to the detail of the interface design, for example, the colours and icons on the interface; the field experiment identified issues of validity and precision of the data presented by the application when using the application in a stadium.

An analysis of positive versus negative behaviours [ 11 ] was undertaken. This data included verbal reports and rating scale data according to the user experience definitions. Accepting the limitations of a direct comparison, participants reacted more negatively in the laboratory setting when completing similar tasks using the similar user-initiated personalisation approach. In the field, individuals were influenced by the atmosphere surrounding the sports event, and this resulted in an enhanced user experience.

In addition, they focused more attention on the actual usage of personalisation on the mobile device, instead of issues to do with the interface. The lab setting was less engaging than the field setting; participants were more likely to be critical, and in general they took longer to perform certain tasks by focusing and commenting on interface issues such as fonts and colours used.

The field experiment was more difficult to conduct than the lab experiment, a point noted by many authors, including Kjeldskov et al. Confounding factors were present, for example, variations in the weather and noise from other spectators.

The greater control possible with a laboratory study as discussed by a range of authors, including [ 2 , 5 , 8 ] was clearly demonstrated during these studies. Where there is an interest in qualitative data, good communication between the researcher and participants is vital. The field experiment provided a more open and relaxed atmosphere for discourse.

Users more freely discussed their use of the mobile applications, their underlying beliefs, and attitudes that arose during the study. The field experiment helped the communication tensions with the participants as they felt they were not being directly examined. As well as generally promoting the generation of qualitative data, the field experiments encouraged the expression of broader, as well as more contextually relevant views. An example is the identification of contextually dependent requirements, which occurred much less frequently during the lab-based studies.

Some suggestions for user impact assessment with mobile devices can be made based on the findings of this study. A lab experiment is recommended when the focus is on the user interface and device-oriented usability issues.

In such cases, a well-designed lab study should provide the validity required, while being easier, quicker, and cheaper to conduct. However, the results suggest that a field experiment is better suited for investigating a wider range of factors affecting the overall acceptability of mobile services, including system functions and impact of usage contexts. The natural tension between a deductive and inductive research design was also apparent.

This research in general was essentially deductive, since it set out to explain causal relationships between variables, operationalized concepts, controlled variables, and used structured and repeatable methods to collect data.

However, the field study in particular also comprised an inductive element, as there was a desire to understand the research context and the meanings attached to events in order to help design the lab study. Van Elzakker et al. The undertaking of a field experiment followed by a lab experiment was an attempt at multiplicity of methods from an essentially deductive viewpoint.

This recognised that the natural research process is often that of moving from a process of understanding to one of testing , whilst attempting to avoid the unsatisfactory middle ground of user evaluations that are divorced from any underlying research objectives.

In all cases, participant responses were based on a six-point scale ranging from 1 strongly disagree to 6 strongly agree. This work has been carried out as part of the Philips Research Programme on Lifestyle. The authors would like to thank all the participants who were generous with their time during this study. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article of the Year Award: Outstanding research contributions of , as selected by our Chief Editors. Read the winning articles. Journal overview. Special Issues. Academic Editor: Caroline G. Received 30 Jul Accepted 12 Jan Published 11 Apr Abstract There is a growing debate in the literature regarding the tradeoffs between lab and field evaluation of mobile devices.

Introduction Usability analysis of systems involving stationary computers has grown to be an established discipline within human-computer interaction. Background 2. Mobile Personalisation Personalization techniques can be classified into three different categories [ 15 ]: rule-based filtering systems, content-filtering systems, and collaborative filtering systems.

Figure 1. Modules forming a mobile personalization application. Figure 2. Figure 3. Obtaining personalised information on particular athletes. Figure 4. Obtaining general information on all athletes. Table 1. Figure 5. The experimental method involves the manipulation of variables to establish cause and effect relationships. The key features are controlled methods and the random allocation of participants into controlled and experimental groups. An experiment is an investigation in which a hypothesis is scientifically tested.

In an experiment, an independent variable the cause is manipulated and the dependent variable the effect is measured; any extraneous variables are controlled. An advantage is that experiments should be objective. The views and opinions of the researcher should not affect the results of a study. This is good as it makes the data more valid , and less biased.

A laboratory experiment is an experiment conducted under highly controlled conditions not necessarily a laboratory , where accurate measurements are possible. The researcher decides where the experiment will take place, at what time, with which participants, in what circumstances and using a standardized procedure. Participants are randomly allocated to each independent variable group. Field experiments are done in the everyday i. The experimenter still manipulates the independent variable, but in a real-life setting so cannot really control extraneous variables.