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.
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.
Read more about Field Experiment: History, Field Experiments in International Development Research, Caveats
Famous quotes containing the words field and/or experiment:
“The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.... Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”
—James Madison (1751–1836)