POL101Y1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Null Hypothesis, Statistical Hypothesis Testing, Dependent And Independent Variables
Document Summary
Theory: tentative conjecture about the causes of some phenomenon or interest. Causal theory: used to explain phenomenon of interest: then scientists test the theory by restating testable hypothesis. Hypothesis: theory-based statement about a relationship we expect to observe. Theory-based statement of what would happen if there was no relationship between an independent variable and dependent variable. In fact, a scientist"s theory is never proven: scientists tend to favour the null hypothesis over their theory because they want to avoid making claims that might end up being wrong. Until this point, political scientists thought voters were influenced by presidential campaigns. However by interviewing the same people during the campaign from interview to interview, they found that voters made up their minds about how they would vote before campaigning began (in the book the people"s choice) After this study, resulting paradigm shift meant that new research was conducted to explain why this might be the case like richard niemi and.
