SOCPSY 1Z03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Dependent And Independent Variables, Confounding, Random Assignment
20 Sep 2016
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Aggregates, not individuals: social scienti c theories deal with aggregated and not individual behaviour. Dealing with aggregated human behaviour not trying to explain one person, reason: people are not predictable, they have free will, thus, it is hard to explain. So when you look at collectives of what people do it becomes easier to explain. Goal is to explain aggregated patterns of behaviour that are regular even though individuals within aggregate vary over time: these theories try to understand the systems in which people operate. The elements of the systems are not individuals but variables: always will see deviances. Research methods: methods for testing causal relationships between phenomena and variables, variable- any characteristic or attribute that varies (e. g. gender, age, income, if it doesn"t vary, then social sciences are typically not interested in it. Casual order- whats meant to be the outcome. Causality: temporal order, co- variation (association or correlation)
