1. Harvard Summer School, 2013 Graduate Research Methods and Scholarly Writing in the Social Sciences: Government and History Harvard Summer School: SSCI S-100b Section 2 (32761)
Joe Bond Class 5 July 8, 2013

2. Agenda Announcements Research Related Presentation
Facilitation (Richard)
In-Class 5

3. Volunteers to facilitate next week?
July 15th Midterm Exam
July 17th

4. Logic of Nomothetic Explanation
Using a few factors (independent variables) to account for many variations in a given phenomenon
Unlike idiographic explanation, nomothetic explanation is probabilistic or usually incomplete
Factors that might cause attitudes about the legalization of marijuana
Political orientation cause attitudes toward legalization of marijuana even though not all liberals approve nor all conservatives disapprove

5. Criteria for Nomothetic Causality
The variables must be correlated
The cause takes place before the effect
The variables are non-spurious
Some times referred to as internal validity

6. Necessary and Sufficient Causes
A necessary cause represents a condition that must be present for the effect to follow
It is necessary to take college courses in order to get a degree
But simply taking courses is not a sufficient cause of getting a degree
You need to take the right ones and pass
Being female is a necessary condition of becoming pregnant, but it is not a sufficient cause

7. Unfortunately, we almost never discover single causes that are absolutely necessary and absolutely sufficient when analyzing nomothetic relationships
It is not uncommon, however, to find causal factors that are either 100% necessary (you must be female to become pregnant) or 100% sufficient (skipping every exam will inevitably cause you to fail it)

8. Units of Analysis
Nomothetic research often looks at large collections of people or things, or aggregates
It is important to distinguish between the unit of analysis and the aggregates that we generalize about
We may want to study individuals as actors or groups of individuals as actors

9. Typical Units of Analysis
Individuals
Groups
Organizations
Social Artifacts (e.g. books, poems, automobiles)
Countries

10. Ecological Fallacy
Ecological refers to groups or sets or systems: something larger than individuals
The ecological fallacy is the assumption that something learned about an ecological unit says something about the individuals making up that unit.

11. Example
We want to know something about the nature of electoral support received by a female candidate
We have the vote tally for each precinct so we know which precincts gave her the most support
We also know that most of her support came from precincts with relatively young voters
Conclusion: younger voters gave the most support – an ecological fallacy has been committed

12. Reductionism
A second type of potentially faulty reasoning related to units of analysis is reductionism
Reductionism means seeing and explaining complex phenomena in terms of a single, narrow concept or set of concepts
What caused the American Revolution?
A shared commitment to the value of individual liberty?
The economic plight of the colonies in relation to Britain?
The megalomania of the founders?

13. The Dimension of Time
Cross-Sectional Study – A study based on observations representing a single point in time
Longitudinal Study – A study design involving the collection of data at different points in time
Trend Study – A type of longitudinal study that examines changes within a population over time (comparison of U.S. Censuses over a period of decades)

14. The Dimension of Time, Continued
Cohort Study – the study of specific subpopulations, or cohorts, as they change over time (e.g. series of surveys conducted over the years to study attitudes of the cohort born during WW II toward U.S. involvement in foreign affairs)
Panel Studies – like a cohort study but they examine the same set of people each time

15. Questions to Ask
Does the study seem to be exploring, describing, or explaining (or some combination of these)?
What are the sources of data?
Can you identify the unit of analysis?
Is the dimension of time relevant? If so, how is it handled?
Group exercize

16. Basic Elements of a Research Proposal
Problem or Objective
What exactly do you want to study?
Why is it worth studying?
Does the proposed study have practical significance?
Does it contribute to the construction of social theories?

17. Basic Elements of a Research Proposal
Literature Review
What have others said about this topic?
What theories address it and what do they say?
What previous research exists?
Are there consistent findings, or do past studies disagree?
Are there flaws in the body of existing literature that you think you can remedy?

18. Basic Elements of a Research Proposal
Subjects for Study
Whom or what will you study in order to collect data?
Identify the subjects in general, theoretical terms.
In specific, more concrete terms, identify who is available for study and how you’ll reach them.
Will it be appropriate to select a sample? If so, how will you do that?
Is there any possibility that your research will affect those you study, how will you ensure you don’t harm them?

19. Basic Elements of a Research Proposal
Measurement
What are the key variables in your study?
How will you define and measure them?
Do your definitions and measurement methods duplicate or differ from those of previous research on this topic?
Have you have already developed your measurement device (e.g. a questionnaire) or will you use something previously developed by others?

20. Basic Elements of a Research Proposal
Data-Collection
How will you actually collect your data?
Will you conduct an experiment or a survey?
Will you undertake field research or will you focus on the reanalysis of statistics already created by others?
Perhaps you will use more than one method.

21. Basic Elements of a Research Proposal
Analysis
Indicate the kind of analysis you plan to conduct.
Spell out the purpose and logic of your analysis.
Are you interested in precise description?
Do you intend to explain why things are the way they are?
Do you account for variations in some quality: for example, why some students are more liberal than others?
How will you know if you have explained variations adequately?

22. Measurement Can we measure anything?
Most variables we want to study don’t actually exist in the way a rock exists
Political party affiliation
A) look at voter registration lists
B) ask voters which party they identify with
A & B reflect different definitions of political party affilitation
They may even produce different results

23. Indicators and Dimensions
Indicator: An observation that we choose to consider as a reflection of a variable we wish to study. For example, attending church might be considered an indicator of religiosity.
Dimension: A specifiable aspect of concept.

24. Reliability
That quality of measurement method that suggests that the same data would have been collected each time in repeated observations of the same phenomenon.
In the context of a survey, we would expect that the question “Did you attend church last week?” would have higher reliability than the question “About how many times have you attended church in your life?
Do not confuse this with validity.

25. Validity
A term describing a measure that accurately reflects the concept it is intended to measure.
IQ would seem a more valid measure of you intelligence than would the number of hours you spend in the library
Though the ultimate validity of a measure can never be proven, we may agree to its relative validity on the basis of face validity, criterion validty, content validity, construct validity, internal and external validities

26. Face Validity
The quality of an indicator that makes it seem like a reasonable measure of some variable
That the frequency of church attendance is some indicator of a person’s religiosity seems to make sense without a lot of explanation
It has face validity

27. Criterion Validity
The degree to which a measure relates to some external criterion
For example, the College Board is shown in their ability to predict the college success of students
Also called predictive validity

28. Construct Validity
The degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships
You want to measure marital happiness
Assume couples who are faithful tend to be happier than those who are not
If you measure relates to fidelity, that constitutes evidence of your measure’s construct validity

29. Content Validity
The degree to which a measure covers a range of meanings included within the concept
A test of mathematical ability can’t be limited to addition alone
If we are measuring prejudice, do our measurements reflect all types of prejudice, including prejudice against racial and ethnic groups, religious minorities, women, the elderly, and so on?

30. Index
A type of composite measure that summarizes and rank-orders several specific observations and represents some more general dimension
We might construct an index by simply accumulating scores assigned to individual attributes
We might measure prejudice, for example, by adding up the number of prejudiced statements each respondent agreed with

31. Scale
A type of composite measure composed of several items that have logical or empirical structure among them
Examples include Guttman, Likert, and Thurstone scales

32. U.S. News and World Report College Rankings
Rankings reflect an index created from items like educational expenditures/student, graduation rates, selectivity, SAT scores of 1st year students, etc.
1999 Cal Tech moved from 9th to 1st
Expenditures/student were considered as rankings (i.e. 1, 2, 3) and not the actual amount it spent relative to other schools

33. Scale Construction
1995 UN set out to examine the status of women in the world
Created 2 indexes reflecting 2 different dimensions
Gender-related Development Index (GDI)
Life expectancy, education, income
Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)
Proportion of parliamentary seats held by women, proportion of administrative, managerial, professional, and technical positions held by women

34. How Would you Rate Colleges and Universities
What criteria would you use?

35. Non-probability Sampling
Any technique in which samples are selected in some way not suggested by probability theory
Examples include reliance on available subjects as well as purposive (judgmental), quota, and snowball sampling

36. Purposive (judgmental) Sampling
A type of non-probability sampling in which you select the units to be observed on the basis of your own judgment about which ones will be the most useful
Want to compare left-wing and right-wing leaning students
Sample the memberships of right and left wing groups

37. Snowball Sampling
A non-probability sampling method often employed in field research whereby each person interviewed may be asked to suggest additional people for interviewing
Wish to learn a community organization’s pattern of recruitment over time
Might begin by interviewing fairly recent recruits, asking them who introduced them to the group
You might then interview the people named

38. Quota Sampling
A type of non-probability sampling in which units are selected into a sample on the basis of pre-specified characteristics, so that the total sample will have the same distribution of characteristics assumed to exist in the population being studied

39. Simple Random Sample
A type of probability sampling in which the units composing a population are assigned numbers.
A set of random numbers is then generated, and the units having those numbers are included in the sample

40. Systematic Sampling
A type of probability sampling in which every kth unit in a list is selected for inclusion in the sample
Compute k by dividing the size of the population by the desired number of the desired sample size

41. Stratified Sampling
The grouping of units composing a population into homogeneous groups before sampling
Improves the representativeness of a sample
Stratified sample of university students
First organize your population by college class and then draw appropriate numbers of freshmen, sophomores, Juniors, seniors

42. 5th In-Class Writing Exercise
You are interested in researching some behavioral phenomenon exhibited by a group of individuals – say you want to learn about the type of person who still does not wear seatbelts even though virtually every state in the country requires their use. Alternatively, you might want to learn about the type of person who still smokes cigarettes… after decades of research advising people that smoking kills.
Using one of these two examples, and on this side of this sheet only, please state a research question, the null hypothesis for it, and identify the type of research you will use and explain how you intend to execute your study.