Using material from item A and elsewhere, assess the strengths and weaknesses of using experiments to investigate power and authority in prisons

DAT- An experiment is conducted by researchers in a laboratory, field or natural conditions. Depending on the conditions, the experiment could end up with either qualitative or quantitative data. In this context, it’s a field experiment.
P- (a cage) A Practical disadvantage of using experiments in prisons is that they tend to be very segregated from the rest of society and thus are very hard to gain access to for research reasons. The process of a sociologists getting granted access could take weeks or even months, even when allowed access to the prison, the experiment itself will be extremely slow and vigorously checked by prison guards to prevent danger to the researcher.
Furthermore, factors such as class, age and gender may influence the information received from prisoners. For example, if the researcher is female, the prisoners may act in a certain way to try to impress the female researcher, which would also cause problems for the experimenter. This will also make it hard for the researcher to gain accurate information and could also put the researcher at risk of abuse, both sexually and physically.
In addition, field and natural experiments could take a long time to conduct and also variables are not being controlled, so you cannot establish an association between the variables.
E- (Includes i.c.e .v.c) There are many particular ethical issues when studying prisons, safety is a major issue for researchers in prison especially when dealing with those who have committed serious offences. However, the researcher may have ‘guilty knowledge’ told to him by a prisoner and this suggests that the researcher has a moral right to break the rules of privacy and has to tell the police.
Individuals involved in either field or natural experiments are not usually aware that they are being researcher, this is kept secret to maximise natural behaviour, but this also raises some ethical issues such as lack of informed consent. This is an ethical issue because the pps must sign the consent form to allow the researcher to publish the results from the study and also the pps must be aware of their rights, such as their right to withdraw from the study. Moreover, re-creating power and authority relationships in an artificial laboratory situation can cause other ethical problems, as seen in Professor Zimbardo’s prison experiment.
R- One advantage of conducting experiments in prisons is that detailed video footage will be available for other researchers to view and thus be able to conduct a similar experiment with the footage and additional information they have about the procedure of the experiment. One disadvantage of conducting experiments in prisons is that they tend to be unique, this is because prisons vary around the world. For example, prisons in the UK tend to be more civilised than prisons in Mexico. This suggests that because it’s unique, it would be extremely hard for other researchers to replicate the experiments and obtain similar results.
V- Validity of the field experiments would be quite low. This is because the prisoners would