SOCI 3030 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Social Class, Dependent And Independent Variables, Statistical Hypothesis Testing
Document Summary
It is never enough merely to gather data (or, for that matter, any kind of information). The role of stats in scientific inquiry: a theory is an explanation of the relationships among phenomena. Examples of variables would be gender, age, ethnicity or political affiliation. Independent variable: the cause: dependent variables: the effect, hypothesis: is a statement about the relationship between variables that while. Then we need to decide a measure of social class and health status. Descriptive stats: when the researcher needs to summarize or describe the distribution of a single variable. These stats are called (univariate) descriptive stats: when the researcher wishes to describe the relationship between two or more variables. These stats are useful because they enable us to investigate two matters of central theoretical and practical importance to any science with causation and prediction. Inferential stats: this becomes relevant when we wish to generalize our finding from a sample to a population.
