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Some Review + New Concepts

Some Review + New Concepts. What specific qualities make political science a science ? (e.g., what methods, replicable, falsifiable, generalizable, cumulative) What is a research design ? What is an independent variable? What is a dependent variable?

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Some Review + New Concepts

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  1. Some Review + New Concepts • What specific qualities make political science a science? (e.g., what methods, replicable, falsifiable, generalizable, cumulative) • What is a research design? • What is an independent variable? • What is a dependent variable? • What is an intervening variable? • What is a theory? What is a hypothesis? What is a variable? What is the null hypothesis? • Can you give an example that puts all of these concepts together into a hypothetical study? Assume that you have been asked to explain a “model” of voter turnout in the 2016 election.

  2. Key Concepts—Cont. • What does the term “operationalization” mean? • What is a literature review? Where is the bulk of it typically found in a research article? • What is does it mean to say that some variables have higher “reliability” than others, while other variables have higher “validity” than others. What is “face validity?” How do assess our measures “construct validity” (Two examples: Think about education as a “proxy” for income or child rearing practices as a “measure” for authoritarianism)… see handout • Often, multiple variables are combined into additive indexes or scales that allow researchers to measure latent qualities • What is the difference between survey error and survey bias? Examples of both? How do you try to reduce each? What is acquiescence bias? What is social desirability bias?

  3. Key Concepts—Cont. • What is the difference between survey error and survey bias? Examples of both? How do you try to reduce each? What is acquiescence bias? What is social desirability bias? • What is the difference between the mean and the median? When are they equal to one another? When is the mean larger/smaller (give an example of each)? What does a positive vs. a negative skew look like? • What is an outlier, and how does it impact the mean vs. the median? Other options to deal with outliers? • What is the “unit of analysis”? How does this concept need to figure into a research project? • What are categorical/nominal variables? What is a dummy variable? What are ordinal variables? What is a Likert scale? Why are some types of Likert scales not practices What is an interval/continuous variable? What is a ratio variable? • What is an IQR (inter quartile range)? When is it a better measure of dispersion than a standard deviation?

  4. Key Concepts—Cont.

  5. Key Concepts—Cont. • If the mean for a national test score is 1000 and the standard deviation is 200 points, what score would put a student in the 5th percentile? In the 95th percentile? 99th percentile? • How would those scores change if the standard deviation were 50 points?

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