MIDTERM 1 Flashcards
concrete vs. abstract levels of experience
concrete- sensory experiences, composed of percepts which put together are patterns.
abstracts- concepts are an organization of sensory experiences, concepts put together are propositions which are explanations of the connections of different abstracts.
knowledge
the connection of facts to make empirical rules (connection between concrete and abstract)
theory; scientific theory vs. ideology
the interconnection of proposition or the connection of ideas to tell a story, scientific theory has empirical foundations and is testable and the ideology is based on faith
how are theory is developed
inductive reasoning (actuarial) - looking at specific cases to make generalizations. deductive reasoning(clinical)- looking at the general ideas and applying them to specific cases.
quantitative vs. qualitative research methods
qualitative is inductive, quantitative is deductive
hypo-deductive method
using facts to explain abstract concepts
empirical deduction
the process of hypo-deductive method in which we turn abstract concepts into researchable form
operationalization
finding the variables to measure propositions
variables vs. values
variables- empirical measurement of observable characteristics.
values- different forms of the variable
instrumentalization
instrumentalization- creating a tool to measure the variable
measurement
applying the tool of measurement to the variable
observation
the result of the measurement of the variable
data
collection of observation over many cases
statistics
summary of that data
Elements of a good research question
- starts with a why or what causes
- focuses on variance of a situation
- focuses on the dependent variable
- general nouns not focuses on the individual thing
univariate vs. bivariate analysis
They are both forms of statistical analysis. one looks at explaining variables individually and the other looks at the relationship between two variables.
what is the difference between theory and hypothesis
casual theory is the explanation between the relationship between variables, the “why”. Hypothesis is the testable theory derived from the theory, or the operationalization of the theory.
steps to creating the hypothesis.
- find a unit of analysis
2. identify independent and dependent variable
control variable
the variable that may affect the relationship between the independent and dependent variable.
3 key questions when choosing a statistical technique of analysis
- how many variables are being measured- uni, bi, multivariate
- inferential or descriptive
- what is the level of measurement
NOIR
Nominal- no order or rank
Ordinal- ranked order, no fixed relationship between
Interval- ranked order, negative values, fixed relationship
ratio- ranked order, fixed relationship, absolute zero
measurement errors
consistent vs. inconsistent measurement errors.
criteria for a good measurement
reliability- free of random error
validity- free of systematic error
frequency distributions and frequency tables and there weakness
frequency tables are used to look at the distributions of observations in the dataset, but when the data becomes a lot frequency tables have to collapse some of the information which can lead to information loss.
measures of central tendency vs. measures of dispersion
central tendency- the typical value of the data
dispersion- spread of the values of the variable
what do the measures of dispersion mean
IQV- the heterogeneity in the data set
Variance and SD- the deviance of the mean
range- difference between the lowest and highest value
