Experimental Research (ABRI course)

This course is offered by the Amsterdam Business Research Institute (ABRI), Vrije Universiteit. The course is open to students as part of the BDS curriculum. Contact your DGS before registering for this course.

Course content

Do people buy more on a website with calming or arousing colors, and may this be dependent on the type of product that is sold? Do people behave more or less sustainable when feeling uncertain due to, for instance, an economic crisis and why? These are the kind of questions that we investigate as experimental researchers. In this course you will learn how to do experimental research. Contrary to a survey, an experiment enables a researcher to test a hypothesized causal relationship between an independent variable (e.g., uncertainty) and a dependent variable (e.g., sustainable behavior) by manipulating the independent variable (e.g., imagining an uncertain vs certain situation). In this course, we will dig deeper into the different phases of designing and conducting an experimental study. First, we will discuss how to come up with specific hypotheses, ready to be tested in an experimental context. Second, we discuss how to design and conduct an experiment in which you manipulate independent variable(s), measure dependent variable(s), and control for extraneous variable(s). Third, we discuss how to analyze the results from an experiment, with the appropriate statistical tools (SPSS). Finally, we discuss how to interpret the results of an experiment, eliminate alternative hypotheses, and design a set of follow-up studies. These discussions are set against the backdrop of actual examples from practice and, in combination with your assignment, from your own research ideas.