Field Research
Definition
Field research refers to empirical investigation carried out in naturally occurring settings rather than the laboratory, where researchers observe behaviour or test interventions among people in the contexts in which that behaviour ordinarily occurs. It gives up some experimental control in exchange for greater ecological validity and access to populations that laboratory samples rarely reach.
In research published in Advances in Psychology, field research serves as a means of testing whether a psychological intervention developed and first evaluated elsewhere holds up among the population it is meant to protect. A randomised controlled field experiment with 191 vulnerable youth in post-conflict areas of Iraq formerly under ISIS control used a 2x2 mixed design (pre-post by treatment-control) to evaluate Radicalise, a short inoculation game translated and adapted for the Iraqi context as a conceptual replication of earlier work. Playing the game improved participants' ability to spot extremist manipulation techniques in WhatsApp messages (d = 0.31). The gain in confidence fell just above the conventional significance threshold, and the ability to identify individuals vulnerable to recruitment did not change. The authors acknowledge that the field study may have been underpowered relative to the original study and ask readers to interpret the results with corresponding caution.
Sources: Saleh et al. (2023)
Related Terms
- Post-Conflict Region (1 shared article)
- Gamification (1 shared article)
- Inoculation Theory (1 shared article)
Applications
Field Research and Psychological Inoculation
Inoculation interventions such as the Radicalise game expose players to weakened doses of manipulation techniques, and a field experiment in post-conflict Iraq examined whether this approach transfers to high-risk, real-world environments. Among vulnerable youth, the game improved detection of manipulative extremist messaging, though it did not improve participants' ability to identify individuals vulnerable to recruitment.
Sources: Saleh et al. (2023)
Field Research and Statistical Power
A randomised trial with at-risk youth in areas previously controlled by ISIS included 191 participants. The authors state that their field study may have been underpowered compared with the original study, which bears directly on how the borderline confidence effect (p = 0.051) and the null result for identifying vulnerable individuals should be read.
Sources: Saleh et al. (2023)
