COMM 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Correlation Does Not Imply Causation, Causal Model, Pessimism

• School: U of M
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 101
• Professor: Julia Lippman

Document Summary

The end goal of social science is always explanation. Take away #1: for social science, the ultimate goal is explanation. In the process of explaining things, we describe what we think is happening: we"ve seen this in hypotheses we describe the relations we expect between variables. We can express hypotheses using a causal diagram: (watching tv ads > depression, (watching tv ads < > depression) Causal diagrams show which variable is the independent: arrow coming away from a variable, that is the independent, arrow coming into a variable is dependent. Take away #2: relations between variables can be thought of as projected causes and effects. However, we want to do more than simply establish that there is a relationship, we also want to know how that happens. How variables relate: direct causation: the independent variable directly in uences the dependent variable; no intervening steps, third variables.