PSCI 2024 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Spurious Relationship, Ice Cream, Margarine
4 May 2017
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Tentative/direct answer to your research question: select the appropriate research technique- experiment, survey, case studies, etc, observe the behavior/ collect data, analyze your data, interpret the results and draw conclusions. Political science as a science (slide 4: this is diffi(cid:272)ult (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause , social sciences involve studying people- different things are going to. Is it comparable: limitations to the extent we can follow the scientific method perfectly. You do not get perfect data in political science. Causation (slide 7+8: time order is shown (slide 7, covariation (slide 8) Causation (slide 9: causation is sometimes concluded when it does not exist. Spurious relationship: third variable (slide 10: churches and bars, vs bars to churches, the relationship between bars to churches is spurious but the third factor may be population, have to account for other factors. As ice scream sales increase, the number of drownings increase: it may be because it is the summer and more people are swimming.
