Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Lecture 3 - 4 - Reviewing The Scholarly Literature Adn Planning
Lecture 3 - 4 - Reviewing The Scholarly Literature Adn Planning
Periodicals
Scholarly journals
Books
Dissertations
Government
documents
Policy reports
Presented paper
Copyright Allyn and Bacon 2008
Citation Format
Question
2. Design search
How to search
Articles
Scholarly books
Dissertation
Government documents
Policy reports and presentation papers
Copyright Allyn and Bacon 2008
Downside
No quality control
Not complete
Often time consuming
Difficult to document
Limitations to research
Time, cost, access, approval, ethics, expertise
Examine literature
Talk over with others
Apply to a specific context
Define the aim of the study
Characteristics of Causal
Hypotheses
Hypothesis: a proposition to test or a tentative statement that
two variables are causally related
5 Characteristics:
1. At least 2 variables
2. Expresses a cause-effect relationship
3. Can be expressed as a prediction
4. Logical link between hypothesis and theory
5. Falsifiable - it is capable of being tested against
empirical evidence and shown to be true or false
Aspects of Explanation
Level of analysis
the level of social reality in a theoretical explanation
can include a mix of the number of people, the amount of space, the
scope of the activity, and the length of time
delimits the kinds of assumptions, concepts, and theories that you can
use
Units of analysis
the type of unit you use when measuring concepts and variables
Common units in social science are the individual person, the group, a
community, the organization, the social category, the social institution
and the society
Copyright Allyn and Bacon 2008
Aspects of Explanation
Aspects of Explanation
Ecological fallacy
a type of error that arises from a mismatch of units of analysis
indicates imprecise reasoning or generalizing beyond what the
evidence warrants
occurs when you have data at high or aggregated unit of
analysis but make statements about low or disaggregated units
Reductionism (Fallacy of nonequivalence)
involve mismatched units of analysis and imprecise reasoning
about evidence
occurs when you observe a lower or disaggregated unit of
analysis but then make statements about higher or aggregated
units
Aspects of Explanation
Spurious association
Spuriousness a statement that appears to be a causal
explanation, but is not because of a hidden, unmeasured, or
initially unseen variable
The unseen variable comes earlier in the temporal order, and it
has a causal impact on what was initially posited to be the
independent variable as well as the dependent variable
occurs when two variables appear to be associated, but the
variables actually are not related
Spurious Relationship
between Race and Test Scores
Summary of Errors