38 Chapter 2■ Most research in the area of sex comparisons is
correlational because sex is a subject variable rather
than a target variable.
■ Field experiments—though difficult to conduct—
maximize both internal and external validity.
■ Longitudinal studies can help to enhance the internal
validity of correlational research.
■ Meta-analysis is a statistical tool that was developed to
summarize the results of studies. In the area of gender,
meta-analyses have been conducted on sex comparison
studies in a wide variety of domains.DIFFICULTIES IN
CONDUCTING
RESEARCH ON GENDER
Now that you understand the basic compo-
nents of the research process, we can examine
the difficulties that arise when applying this
process to the study of gender. The study of
gender has some unique difficulties that other
research domains do not face. Other difficul-
ties inherent in scientific research are par-
ticularly problematic in the study of gender.
At each stage of the research process, the re-
searcher, who is sometimes the experimenter,
can intentionally or unintentionally influence
the outcome. Biases may be detected in the
question asked, the way the study is designed,
how the data are collected, how the data are
interpreted, and how the results are commu-
nicated. Participants in experiments also can
influence the outcome by their awareness of
gender-role stereotypes, their desire to fit or
reject gender-role norms, and their concerns
with self-presentation. That is, participants
care about how they appear to the experi-
menter and to other participants. In this sec-
tion, I review the ways the experimenter and
the participant can influence study outcomes.cannot distinguish age effects from cohort
effects. With a longitudinal design, we would
take a single cohort of women (ages 20 to 25)
and follow them for many years to see if they
reduce the number of hours they work out-
side the home over time.Meta-Analysis
Because the question of whether one sex dif-
fers from the other sex on a host of variables
is so interesting to people and such an easy
question to ask in research, there are hundreds
and hundreds of sex comparison studies. In
the 1980s, a statistical tool called meta-analysis
was applied to these studies to help researchers
synthesize the findings.Meta-analysisquanti-
fies the results of a group of studies. In a meta-
analysis, we take into consideration not only
whether a significant difference is found in a
study but also the size of the difference. In this
way, a meta-analysis can average across the
studies and produce an overall effect that can
be judged in terms of its significance as well as
its magnitude. Meta-analysis will be reviewed
in more depth in Chapter 4 when the results of
sex comparison studies are presented.TAKE HOME POINTS
■ The scientific method rests on empiricism, and a key
determinant of whether a theory is scientific is whether
it is falsifiable.
■ The key feature of the experimental method is random
assignment, which helps to isolate the independent
variable as the true cause of the effect.
■ Correlational research is often easier to conduct than
experimental research and has high external validity
but low internal validity.
■ Experiments are often high in internal validity but may
lack external validity if conducted in the laboratory.M02_HELG0185_04_SE_C02.indd 38 6/21/11 12:19 PM