GVPT 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Dependent And Independent Variables, General Social Survey
24 Jul 2016
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Theories: generally, in empirical political research, seek to develop and test theoretical arguments, ex. : what percentage of likely voters to vote for president obama: ex. : are people with more education more likely to vote: theories are explanations which generally make casual statements. If x happens, then y will follow as a result: generally probabilistic, not deterministic. Identifies a relationship between an independent and dependent variable. Identify premises flowing from these assumptions and show how they relate to each other. Iv and dv: dependent varibale: variable that represents the effect in a causal explanation. Independent variable: variable that represents a causal factor in an explanation: dv is expressed as y. Iv is expressed as x: examples, culpable leaders more likely to win. Therefore, leaders of democracies are very selective about what wars they will fight: hypothesis - democracies are more likely to win wars than non-democracies. Hypothesis: a hypothesis tells you several things, unit of analysis, dependent variable.
