GVPT 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Descriptive Statistics, Statistical Hypothesis Testing, Internal Validity
15 Oct 2018
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Upload excel file and create the statistics. We can differentiate between two general approaches to hypothesis testing: True experiments are the gold standard of research. But, it is very hard to do them in political science. Divide group into experimental and a control group, pretest party affiliation. Experiments have a high degrees of internal validity. The researcher can isolate the impact of the independent variable on the dependent variable. Randomization and pre-measurement assure that impact is from independent variable. Not all political events lend themselves to the experimental setting. Many questions cannot be studied through an experimental design. The research assigns individuals randomly to a control group and a treatment group. In social science we often do not have this power. So in observational research we attempt to observe the effect of a treatment. In true experiments researcher decides who received control and the treatment. Many ways to collect data in observational research.
