Design for Social Experiments

I NTRODUCTION. From diverse experiments with the experimental method in education, psychology, and sociology, a pattern of practicable procedure has begun to emerge. It is our opinion that this pattern of procedure supplies the outlines of a long desired design for social experiments. To avoid misunderstanding of terms, let us state at the outset that by experiments we do not mean such trial and error efforts as the NRA, the AAA, the TVA, or similar gigantic social-economic reforms which are without controlled variables or adequate devices to measure their effects. We mean by experiment the observation of the changing relationship in an interval of time between two variables, meanwhile holding constant or controlling several other variables, which if uncontrolled might themselves explain or cause the effects. Suffice it to say that we shall attempt to describe briefly the efforts made to adapt the experimental method of physical science to the study of cause and effect or functional relationships in the social field. Our analysis is based upon three published or otherwise recorded experiments available for examination by those who are interested. 2. Example of the Published Results of a Social Experiment (Dodd). One of the best documented and recorded results of an experiment that has been published is Stuart C. Dodd's, A Controlled Experiment on Rural in Syria.' Dodd set out to discover the relationship between a program of rural hygiene and the hygienic practices of the families that were supposed to benefit by the program. The program of education in hygiene was put on by an itinerant travelling clinic of the Near East Foundation from I931 to I933. The beneficiaries were 40 families in the Arab village of Jib Ramli in Syria. It is generally believed that efforts to improve the hygienic practices of individuals and families actually result in such improvement that morbidity and mortality are lowered, and general comfort and happiness is increased. Strange as it may seem, the validity of this assumption has seldom been tested, although millions of dollars are spent annually throughout the world on preventive medicine. Dodd decided to set up an experiment that would attempt to measure the effects of hygienic education upon the hygienic practices of a group of individuals and families. In Dodd's study, Hygiene means all the knowledge, practices, and environmental conditions which are under the control