Political Inquiry
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- antecedent
- the object that a pronoun refers to (Ex: The DOCTOR finished HER rounds)
- coordinating conjunction
- transition words that help combine two independent clauses (and, for, yet, so, but, nor)
- pronoun
- a word used in place of a repeated noun
- apposiitives
- words or phrases used to modify another word or phrase for more detail and information
- comma splice
- when you use a comma to seperate two independent clauses without a coordinating conjuction (which is bad)
- preposition
- a word placed before a noun or pronoun to form a phrase modifying another word in the sentence (Ex: the road TO hell is paved WITH good intentions)
- lie and lay
-
lie means to recline or rest on a surface
lay means to put or place something - ambiguous reference and how to fix it
- occurs when the pronoun could refer to two possible antecedents (Ex: Tom told James that he had won the lottery. Fix: Tom told James, "you won the lotter.")
- who and whom
-
who is the subject, does the action
whom is the object that is being acted upon - three uses for a comma
-
1. using a coordinating conjuction
2. parenthetical expression
3. list or series - semicolon
- joining two independent clauses
- parallel structures
- repeated syntactical similarities that balance the sentence (Ex: I like to swim, jump, and reading = bad)
- transitions
- bridges between what has been read and what is about to be read that help the reader follow the sentences
- modifiers
- adverb or adjective that further describes anything
- redundancy
- repetition in the sentence or paragraph that is not needed
- inflated phrases
- too many words that can be described in simplicity
- active verbs
- occur in a sentence where the subject does the action, avoids "to be" verbs
- jargon and pretentious language
- cryptic language that complicates a sentence, making it difficult to understand
- sexist language
- using gender specific pronouns/nouns when it is not appropriate
- cliches
- overused phrases that lose their dazzle
- facts
- details that can change but are important for the moment (Ex: flight plans)
- proximate truths
- Answer what and how, but not why
- eternal truths
- never changing, the why, describes things as they really are and will be, only received by revelation, personal, crucial, and verifiable
- how can scholarship be a form of worship?
- learning and faith are mutually facilitating, brings you closer of God
- what is the role of meekness in scholarship?
- Understanding that some questions can only be answered by revelation and not reason alone
- science
- an attempt to identify and test empirical generalizations
- generalizations
- conclusions that can apply to classes of objects
- empirical
- true or not true based on sensory experience
- objective point of view
- describes unbiased testing, research not dependent on particual researchers biases
- normative
- call for action, prescriptions, "should" and "ought"
- how to reformulate normative to empirical question
-
1. change the frame of reference
2. to ask empirical questions about the assumptions of the normative judgement - What does a research question consist of and why is each important?
- clear, testable, theoretically significant, relevent to the world, original
- logical fallacies
- unreasonable argumentative tactics
- hasty generalization
- a conclusion based on insufficient or unrepresentative evidence
- stereotype
- a hasty generalization about a group
- fals anology
- an anology that is superficially similar, but not in reality
- non sequitar
- no causal connection when the missing key point is something that people would disagree with
- straw man fallacy
- oversimplyfing or distorting opposing views so that they are easily overcome
- deductive reasoning
- start with a logical argument that leads to a theory/hypothesis and then you test it
- thesis
- states a claim that will be supported in the body
- credibility in the intro
- knowledgebale and fair minded, and builds common ground
- reliability
- if other people do the same study, they will get the same results
- validity
- the effectiveness of the measurements to represent the abstract concepts
- hypothesis
- a testable statement derived from the theory (theory is large an encompasing, hypothesis is small and testable)
- scientific method for political scientists
-
1. identify variables
2. make a hypothesis
3. test a hypotheis
4. analysis/generalizations 5. significance of the study - replication
- reliability
- what does a hypothesis consist of?
-
1. falsifiable
2. has specified/operationalized variables
3. shows the relationship and direction (direction - negative, positive) - data
- empirical observations of one or more variables for a number of cases collected accroding to the same operational definitions
- population
- the larger body from which the data sample is drawn
- subjective
- when researches biases affect data collection, analysis, or conclusions
- what are concerns with gathering data from the internet?
- unregulated, legally or practically, and as a result can be misleading or false
- what two things must we keep in mind when using aggregate data?
-
1. ecological fallacy - don't draw conclusions from different units of analysis
2. standardization - divide it by the population so that it is standard - what can we do to minimize the affects of subjective bias in content analysis?
- 1. have more than one person code
- Minimize bias in content analysis?
- multiple researchers coding the data and then compare results
- research design
- logical method by which you propose to test the hypothesis for data collection and analysis
- correlational design
- collecting data on dependent and indpendent variables and determining if there is a pattern of relationship
- correlations
- statistics that measure the strength of co-variation (how they change together, not causation
- case study
- history of a particual event recounted and analyzed in depth, doesn't prove co-variation
- primary difference between quantitative and qualitative
- quantitatve is good for broad generalizations while qualitative is good for in-depth case studies and causal logic
- quantitative research
- thirty or more cases for a study
- qualitative research
- in-depth research with 30 or less cases
- is quantitative more scientific than qualitative?
- no because both use empirical evidence as well as the scientific method
- observable implication
- the condition when a theory can result in different numerous and varied results that can verify or falsify our hypothesis
- falsifiable
- the ability of the theory to be proven wrong through obervable implication
- parsimony
- simplicity (acham's razor)
- what should researchers do if there is very little information available about their topic of interest?
- they should broaden their topic
- dichotomous variable
- when a variable can only take on two values (dummy variable)
- statistic
- a numerical measurement that summarizes some characteristic of a larger body of data
- measures of central tendency
- mean, median, mode - they describe a typical case in a set (values from the study)
- mean
- adding all values then dividing by the amount of variables (interval data)
- median
- middle value (ordinal or interval data)
- mode
- works with nominal (Ex: religions). it is the most common value
- skewed
- when outliers distort the central tendency
- dispersion
- how closely or widely cases are separated on a variable
- range
- difference between the highest and lowest values
- standard deviation
- a summation of the difference of each case from the mean
- significance
- probablity that the relationship between the variables was a coincidence
- describe the strength, direction, and significance in statistics
-
1. strength - shows the amount that a change in one variable correlates with a change in another
2. direction - positive or negative
3. significance - probablity that the relationship between the variables was a coincidence - what are the data sets for types of quantitative variable?
-
Nominal (pet type)
Ordinal (pet weight by category)
Interval (number of pets)
Ratio (number of kids v. number of pets) - Main objective of plsc 200
- to gain new knowledge
- how does the class help aceive gaining new knowledge?
- Gives us the tools necessary to research and gain new knowledge, also the scientific method
- what does the "science as a process" entail?
- observation, theory, test, analysis, conclusion
- what are the three careers to generate new knowledge?
- lawyers, public officials, business people
- what is the possessive of "it"?
- its
- three uses of apostrophes
-
1. indicates possesive
2. indicates time or qunatity
3. indicates contraction - passive voice
- when the subject of a sentence lack strength because the subject recieves the action instead of committing the action (look for the word "by" and past tense of "to be")
- how do you fix passive voice?
- make the subject committ the action (Ex: the senate passed the bill = good, the senate was going to pass the bill = bad)
- misplaced modifier
- any part of speech that does not refer to the right word or any word in the sentence (ex: I almost ate the entire chicken)
- Darwin and Einsten
-
Darwin - inductive (started with data, then made theory)
Einstein - deductive (started with theory, then got data) - inductive advantage
- observations more closely related to hypothesis (good fit)
- inductive disadvantage
- can be circular, often too specific
- deductive advantage
- coherent and efficient
- deductive disadvantage
- overly abstract and distant from the real world
- positive
- scientific, neutral, supposed to be objective
- post-modern critique
- never completley objective in research because of biases
- what makes a good research question?
- according to KKV, importance to the real world and connection to scholarly literature
- indepedent variable
- narrow causes of the phenomen, experimenters change this to change the dependent variable (microloan presence in a country)
- dependent variable
- narrow phenomenon to study, what we are trying to change (amount of foreign aid recieved)
- characteristics of a theory
- founded in prior scholarship, explains known facts, suggests multiple dependent and independent variables, general, falsifiable
- two units of analysis
-
1. individual (case study)
2. collective (group, country, or international system) - two groups of motivations
-
1. material (money and power)
2. ideational (values and ideas) - difference between grand theory and mid-range theory
-
grand theory - tries to explain all human behavior (people make decisions based on history)
mid-range theory - narrower, not trying to broad generalizations - ad hominem fallacy
- poisening the well, personal attack instead of topic at hand
- red herring
- any diversion to distract from the main issue
- two advantages of primary data
-
1. not second hand
2. only the needed data
3. original and importance
4. avoids biases - two advantages of secondary data
-
1. opinion of experts
2. does not take time to collect data or create data set - golden rule for secondary data
- find what is absolute best for your theory and acknowledge errors
- difference between conceptual and operational definition
-
conceptual - broad, dictionary
operational - measure, specific, defined in terms of the specific study - qualitative, quantitative non-experimental, quantitative quasi-experimental
-
qualitative - less than 30 cases, specific, case study
quantitative non-experimental - not choosing who the experiment is done on, no control variable
quantitative quasi-experimental - choose who is experience and have a control group - two purposes of the General Problem Area
-
1. introduces the topic
2. grabs the reader
3. puts it into research context
4. map out the project - two components of research question
-
1. important
2. connected - causal logic
- explain clearly why and how x causes y, explaining the steps and mechanisms in detail
- external validity and internal validity
-
1. external validity - things can be applied generally, qualitative is poor, quantitative is good (collective)
2. internal validity - appplied specifically, good causal logi, qualitative = good, quantitative = bad (individual) - two concerns with sampling
-
1. sample size
2. sample bias