Can We Generalize from Student Experiments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and International Relations?

The authors conducted an experiment with a group of military officers and replicated it with a group of students at a public university in the United States. The experimental scenario dealt with a decision problem in the area of counterterrorism. The authors found that while more than one-third of s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of conflict resolution 2006-10, Vol.50 (5), p.757-776
Main Authors: Mintz, Alex, Redd, Steven B., Vedlitz, Arnold
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
College students
Conflict resolution
Counterterrorism
Decision making
Design
Experimentation
Experiments
Incidence
International Relations
Leaders
Military
Military officers
Military Personnel
Military strategy
Military technology
National Security
Policy making
Political Science
Politics
Role Playing
Sensors
Students
Terrorism
Uncertainty
Undergraduate Students
United States
War
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The authors conducted an experiment with a group of military officers and replicated it with a group of students at a public university in the United States. The experimental scenario dealt with a decision problem in the area of counterterrorism. The authors found that while more than one-third of students recommended doing nothing, the overwhelming majority of military officers (more than 90 percent) recommended doing something. Also, military officers exhibited less maximizing and more satisfacing decision making than students. The results show that relying on experiments with students "playing" the role of real-world national security policy makers may bias the results. The two groups are, in fact, very different. Based on student samples, it is possible to accept propositions that would not be found with samples of elite decision makers and reject propositions that may be right. However, it is possible that students can be assigned to experiments where they represent the "public" and not elites.
ISSN:0022-0027
1552-8766
DOI:10.1177/0022002706291052