POL S 15 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: External Validity, Internal Validity, Random Assignment
Document Summary
Lots of questions where we cannot conduct an experiment. Student volunteers from introductory political science class randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group was shown clips of daily show coverage of 2004 election; one group was shown comparable clips of cbs evening news coverage; one group watched nothing. Compare political attitudes by having students complete questionnaire afterwards ris gned oup. Slope (standard errors in parentheses next to it) If using regression in paper, table should look like this. Bulk of what we"ve talked about in this class. Written record: government data, articles, diaries, legislation, tv shows, etc. Answering looking at speeches or platforms that have been published, legislation that democratic officials are sponsoring, etc. Observation (direct or indirect): anthropological observation by researcher; many sub-types. Surveys, focus groups, interviews: ask people about beliefs, attitudes, characteristic. Example: are political elites more ideologically extreme than ordinary. No random assignment of subjects to treatment and control groups; maybe no control group.
