POLI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Spurious Relationship, Causal Inference, Gateway Drug Theory
16 Oct 2017
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Identifying sources of spuriousness: identifying a potential spurious correlation, is there any variable that might be a cause of both the iv and the dv, longer hair causes higher grades in highschool. Spurious effect: level of economic development: men are more likely than women to oppose gun control, not easy to find factor that influences gender out of the options given so no spuriousness. Common problems in causal inference: spuriousness, reverse causality. Experiment: ob: research that goes out and observes what is out there, we operationalize our concepts, observes the values of the. Dv and iv for the samples subjects (cases), manipulates: ex: Addressing the causality issue in empirical research: using quasi-experimental design or experimental logic, a quasi-experimental design is one that looks a bit like an experimental design but lacks the key ingredient -- random assignment. Campbell, often referred to them as queasy experiments because they give the experimental purists a queasy feeling.
