STAY IN THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS
Hawthorne effect is an increase in worker productivity observed at the Chicago Hawthorne plant of General Electric in 1920's and 1930's attributed to improvements in worker-management communication and increased involvement of workers with each other. The Hawthorne Effect is a phenomenon in which individuals alter their behavior in response to being observed, and generally the change in behavior is positive. Hawthorne effect refers to a series of experiments on managing factory workers carried out in the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago. The term Hawthorne effect is used more generally to refer to improvement of worker productivity that does not result from any objective change in working conditions or work organization, but seems to arise from workers having more positive psychological feelings about the workplace. The "Hawthorne misunderstanding" is common in criminology, criminal justice, and other fields because authors have failed to recognize this explanation of improved work output.
What Happened at
Hawthorne? - New evidence suggests the Hawthorne effect resulted from
operant reinforcement contingencies - H. M. Parsons,
Riverside Research Institute, New York.
The Hawthorne effect in experimental research is the unwanted effect of the experimental
operations themselves. Following the Hawthorne studies, various explanations have been
proposed to account for rising rates of production. I have favored operant conditioning because it seems to account for
progressive increases in response rate, the Hawthorne phenomenon. Generalizing from the
particular situation at Hawthorne, I would define the Hawthorne effect as the confounding
that occurs if experimenters fail to realize how the consequences of subjects' performance
affect what subjects do. But the Hawthorne effect need not be viewed solely as a problem
in conducting experiments.
The Hawthorne effect in the measurement of adolescent smoking
M Murray, AV Swan, S Kiryluk and GC Clarke - St
Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London.
It is possible that the process of repeatedly measuring the smoking behavior
of adolescents may very well affect that behaviour. This paper reports a test for the
extent of such a "Hawthorne" effect in a
longitudinal research of smoking by
English adolescents. The self-reported smoking behaviour of 15-16 year olds who attended
schools which had participated in the study for five years was compared with that of 15-16
year olds who attended other schools. The prevalence of
smoking was lower in those schools which had been surveyed for five years. A number of
possible explanations for this finding are discussed. It is concluded that such a
Hawthorne effect is unlikely to bias analyses relying on comparisons within the data set.
What Caused the Hawthorne
Effect? - A Scientific Detective Story
H. M Institute for Behavioral Research, Inc. - Administration & Society, Vol. 10,
No. 3, 259-283 (1978).
The studies that produced the Hawthorne effect have been the biggest Rorschach blot in
behavioral and social science. Commentators read into them their own identifications of
the confounding variable that caused a progressive rise in worker's production rates. But
the clues to the real perpetrator of the Hawthorne effect were there all the time.
After the solution to the Hawthorne effect mystery was published, it
was learned that the perpetrator had been identified years earlier by an eminent
psychologist who had worked briefly in the Hawthorne studies, but the word never got
around.
The Hawthorne Misunderstanding (and How to Get the Hawthorne Effect in Action
Research) - GARY D. GOTTFREDSON - Journal of Research in Crime and
Delinquency, Vol. 33, No. 1 (1996).
The Hawthorne relay-assembly research has been misinterpreted as showing that interest in
employees' well-being is sufficient to stimulate increased performance. Producing real Hawthorne effects, that is, improvements in the performance of people, is
important in action research, and such improvements are often the aims of scientists who
pursue this form of research. To produce Hawthorne effects, foster the acceptance of
performance goals or standards, provide feedback on performance, and remove obstacles to
improved performance.
Internal quality assurance or Hawthorne effect?
Vahl CF, Osswald BR, Meinzer P, de Simone R, Thomas G, Hagl S.
Klinik fur Herzchirurgie, Universitat Heidelberg.
The tendency of study participation per se to affect outcome is described by the term
Hawthorne effect. Whenever an attempt is made to describe the effects of quality assurance in more
detail specific mathematical tools are required, including a database system that allows
the calculation of clinical profiles, problem profiles, time-related variance of variables, univariate analysis
and multivariate analysis statistics, calculation
of scores and application of the hazard function.
Was There a Hawthorne Effect? - Stephen R G Jones.
Abstract: The "Hawthorne Effect" has been the most enduring legacy of the
celebrated studies of workplace behaviour conducted in the 1920's and the 1930's at the
Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric company. Paradoxically, it is not clear that this
effect constituted more than an incidental and intermediate finding for the original
researchers. This paper examines the empirical evidence for Hawthorne effects using the
original data from the Hawthorne Relay Assembly Test Room, where a group of workers was
closely studied, with a variety of experimental and other changes in th work environment,
over a period of more than 5 years. The main conclusion is
that there is only a slender evidence of a Hawthorne effect in the Hawthorne Relay
Assembly Test Room.
Prospective Research in Health Service Settings: Health Psychology, Science and
the Hawthorne Effect
Ian O’ Sullivan, Sheina Orbell, Tim Rakow, Ron Parker, University of Essex &
Hospital of St Cross - Journal of Health Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 3.
Health service providers sometimes express concern about the impact of prospective survey
research upon patient behaviour. To date, there is little available evidence from which to
estimate the likelihood of any ‘Hawthorne’ effect on patient behaviour in health
service settings.
Placebos, back belts, and Hawthorne effect
Metzgar, C.R., Vulcan Mater. Co., Winston-Salem, NC;
Abstract: The use of soft back belts in industry and retailing to help prevent and thus
control the costs of back injuries has accelerated over the past three years. The purpose
of this paper is to suggest that the claimed positive results from using back belts, if
any, can be explained by factors other than the physical effects of the belt. It is
suggested that the placebo effect and/or the Hawthorne effect are a more likely
explanation for the claimed positive results than any physical benefits of belt use.
Intentional use of the Hawthorne effect to improve oral hygiene compliance in
orthodontic patients - PH Feil, JS Grauer, CC Gadbury-Amyot, K Kula,
and MD McCunniff.
Journal of Dental Education, Vol 66, Issue 10.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the home care of noncompliant
adolescent orthodontic patients with "poor" oral hygiene could be improved
through the use of a deception strategy designed to intentionally induce the
Hawthorne effect.
Programmed Student Achievement: A Hawthorne Effect? - Haddad, Nabil
F.
Source: Research in Higher Education, 3, 4, 315-22, Dec 75
Abstract: Three groups of college students were given instructions using different testing
techniques to determine whether the superior performance obtained with Programed Student
Achievement (PA) was due to a Hawthorne Effect. Results seem to preclude any attempt to
interpret the effectiveness of PA on that basis.
Recontextualizing the Hawthorne Effect - Wigblad, Rune,
Scandinavian Journal of Management.
Abstract: In this paper we explore the thesis that a threat to the vital interest of an
entity, be it an individual or a group, will lead to forms of increased productivity. We
argue for the hypothesis: Because threat was prevalent in the Hawthorne effect experiments, a
closedown perspective is relevant for recontextualizing the Hawthorne Effect. We are able
to provide refined and extended findings which are relevant to the productivity
development under extreme conditions. Adding these findings to earlier knowledge, deepen
our understanding of the Hawthorne experiments.
G. Adair (1984) "The
Hawthorne effect: A reconsideration of the methodological artifact" J. Appl. Psych.
vol.69 (2), 334-345 [Reviews references to Hawthorne in the psychology methodology
literature.]
Carey, A. (1967) "The Hawthorne Studies: A radical criticism" American
Sociological Review vol.32.
Franke,R.H. & Kaul,J.D. (1978) "The Hawthorne experiments: First statistical
interpretation" American sociological review vol.43 pp.623-643
Gillespie, Richard, (1991) Manufacturing knowledge : a history of the Hawthorne
experiments (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press) [Has an extensive bibliography of
primary sources on Hawthorne.]
Stephen R. G. Jones, (1992) "Was There a Hawthorne Effect?" The American Journal
of Sociology vol.98 no.3 (Nov., 1992), pp. 451-468, from the abstract "the main
conclusion is that these data show slender to no evidence of the Hawthorne Effect"
Landsberger, Henry A. (1958) Hawthorne Revisited (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University )
Olson,R., Verley,J., Santos,L. & salas,C. (1994) "What we teach students about
the Hawthorne studies: A review of content within a sample of introductory I-O and OB
textbooks" Orne,M.T. (1973) "Communication by the total experimental situation:
Why is it important, how it is evaluated, and its significance for the ecological validity
of findings" in P.Pliner, L.Krames & T.Alloway (eds.) Communication and affect
pp.157-191 (New York: Academic Press).
Parsons,H.M. (1974) "What happened at Hawthorne?" Science vol.183, pp.922-932 [A
very detailed description, in a more accessible source, of some of the experiments; used
to argue that the effect was due to feedback-promoted learning.]
Zdep,S.M. & Irvine,S.H. (1970) "A reverse Hawthorne effect in educational
evaluation" Journal of School Psychology vol.8 pp.89-95.