Overview:

In the video on Youtube, an elevator experiment was conducted. One woman (who did not know the experiment was happening) had entered the elevator facing frontwards toward the doors. Every person who had entered and exited the elevator (were in on the experiment) faced the back of the elevator. The experiment was to see how long or if the woman would conform to turning the "wrong" direction because everyone else was doing it. After 4 floors facing the correct direction, the woman turned and faced the back of the elevator like everyone else.

Questions:

1. What type of observation was conducted? Was it a naturalistic observation, structured observation, participant observation, or field experiment?

2. What target behaviors would you want to observe if you were a researcher conducting an observation based on the example above?

3. How might a researcher improve the inter-rater reliability of the study?

4. How might a researcher increase the external validity of the observation study?