CRI350H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Dependent And Independent Variables, Sampling Bias, Russia-1

• School: UTSG
• Department: Criminology and Sociolegal Studies
• Course: CRI350H1
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Not a method of data collection, but a way of setting up a research project. Does not have to be qualitative-data can be quant, analysis can be statistical. Enables inferences about causation by analysis of cases. Important in political science, increasingly used in crim/sociological. Cases don"t have to be countries (but often are) Descriptive/interpretative: use existing theory to understand a particular case, idiographic. Hypothesis-generating (inductive): use cases to build a hypothesis, but without testing competing hypotheses. An example: deviant case analysis (why is this case different from what we expect) Small-n studies not well studies to evaluating multiple variables (degree of freedom-concept in stats) Does not mean you are looking for identical cases. Very small-n, only a few important cases (social revolutions) Problems: method of agreement (mill)/ most different cases . Case 1: a b c d occur together w x y z. Case 2: a e f g occur together with w t u v.