POLSCI 3N06 Lecture Notes - Blind Experiment, Demand Characteristics, Temporality
5 Dec 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
If you want to construct political science: how do you structure your observations. So that it is reasonable to conclude that x causes y. There are different types of research design. How can we reasonably make inferences that we have developed causal relationships. There needs to be a research design; it structures the data. But (at least for positivist research) they all attempt to demonstrate persuasive answers to three issues: temporality. You have to demonstrate the imputed cause came before the effect: correlation. To say there is a causal relation between two variables; when one moves so does the other: spuriousness is there any other variable that can account for the variables the two x and y. Research structure to easily defer; make reasonable inference. The experimental method represents the archetypal approach for positivist social science: the standard towards social science.
