SOAN 2120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Cherry Picking, Verstehen, Spurious Relationship
10 Feb 2015
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Definition: a type of counterfeit argument presented as if it were a theoretical explanation and backed by empirical evidence. Assumes there is a party or source to which a fixed amount of responsibility can be attached. Limitations: it confuses blame with cause (gives an account or story instead of logical explanation with intervening casual mechanism), it fails to explore empirical evidence for and against several alternative causes. First provides an unfortunate circumstance, next identifies one or more responsible parties, then provides selective evidence that shields certain parties or sources. Concept: an idea expressed as a symbol or in words with two parts. E. g. amount of income, temperature, density of population, years of schooling, degree of violence. Partway between a single, simple concept and a theory. Ideal type: pure, abstract models that define the essence of the phenomenon in question. Qualitative researchers often use ideal types to see how well observable phenomena match up to the ideal model.
