SSCI 2810U Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: The Sociological Imagination, Scientific Method

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10 May 2016
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The basic goal of theory simply to explain, to explain something/a phenomenon. What makes a good theory: it sheds light on a topic (some theories do a better job at shedding light on a topic than others, points out relationships between variables (something that changes) Can help us understand how a problem is linked to what we want to explain. A good theory is one that can potentially predict a specific outcome: guides research and also future theory development. A good theory is one that we can apply to the real world. We can take the information within that theory and put it to work in real life settings: holds up to empirical scrutiny. We can test that theory"s explanatory power so we can see if that theory does a good job explaining that particular phenomenon. Some theories are really hard to test for a variety of reasons: parsimony.

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