COMM 2002 Lecture Notes - Null Hypothesis, Operational Definition, Alternative Hypothesis

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 2002
• Professor: all

Document Summary

The stages of quantitative research: theory/research questions, research design survey, concepts to testable statements, select site and sample, collect data, code and analyze data, write up. Concepts and their measurements: concepts categories for the organization of ideas and observations abstract, building blocks of theory, provide explanations of social phenomena, represent social phenomena we want to explain or to be explained. Operationalizing concepts: produced by the operational definition of a concept what do we mean by social inequality or national identity or environmentalism, single indicator measures, multiple indicator measures, concept may have different dimensions, idiosyncrasies of one measure. Errors in causal reasoning: spurious variables something happens and causes the reaction in another, intervening variables there is a relationship between a and b . In other words, the relationship between a and b is amplified by a third variable c : reinforcing variables all the variables are related.