GGR271H1 Lecture Notes - Social Science, Institute For Operations Research And The Management Sciences, Nomothetic
Document Summary
Introduction to data sources and methods week 2 what constitutes knowledge and how knowledge is acquired. Intrepretivism: seek to understand human behaviour, cannot separate the researcher from the researched. Nomothetic explanations: used by those who subscribe to the natural science/ quantitative methods, an explanation that applies to all of humanity, has to satisfy 3 criteria, correlation. The proposed cause and the proposed effect vary together: time order. Ther proposed cause must precede the effect in time: non-spuriousness. Try to determine whether some third factor is the cause of the correlation. Qualitative researchers aim for less generalizing definitions: seek to produce a rich description of a person or a group, rather than to discover general laws and principles, these are called idiographic explanations. Detailed story of the people studied that is based. Perhaps and innapropriate observation schedule was selected: not able to understand intentions behind observed, generates many many small bits of data that can cloud behaviour an analysis of themes.
