The Hawthorne Effect

I am not someone who believes in all the stats and research readily, because you need to know how and why the research was being done in the first place. Poorly conducted research will only generate results that researches hoped for. Research funded by certain company normally will yield result that is of advantage to the company itself.

Now i just read about another effect that may alter research result. The Hawthorne effect.

The Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied,^[1][2] not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.taken from wikipedia

Click on the link above to read more about this effect. Basically it noted that regardless of what changes the researchers did, they posted positive results in the experiment. Actually it is pretty straight forward, when you are being viewed, you always behave better. This is why breadtalk and other restaurants adopted an open kitchen concept and artist only do stupid things when they do not know they are being watched.

This is why good experiments conducted do not allow subjects to know what they are being tested for. Personally i feel asking subjects direct questions on scenario based questions will normally yield a different answer to what they normally do.