Suppose you wanted to determine whether the use of cell phones causes car accidents....

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Luis C

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...Discuss the major limitat Suppose you wanted to determine whether the use of cell phones causes car accidents. Discuss the major limitations and benefits of using the following research methods: naturalistic observation, survey, case study, and experiment.
 
best way to research is install a remote camera. and monitor a intersection. or you could investigate accidents and try to find out if their phone was in a conversation at the time of the crash.
 
naturalistic observation only allows you to observe yourself and those immediately around you, as you can't easily watch people talk on cell phones and have accidents - it's not a large enough sample to be representative.

surveys run the risk of subject dishonesty, as self-reports almost always do, and again have the issue of generating a large enough sample to be statistically representative.

case study runs the risk of assuming that correlation equals causation (someone had an accident while talking on a cell phone, therefore the cell phone caused the accident... never you mind that the accident consisted of the guy hitting a moose while driving through Vermont in a snowstorm...)

experiment runs the risk of harming the subject (by causing someone a car accident!) and therefore is probably unethical.
 
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