POL 2101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Empirical Relationship, Dependent And Independent Variables, Vise

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POL 2101
• Professor: Andre Lecours

Document Summary

It is used to provide a good illustration of how scientific research works in practice. Central logic begins with an observed relationship between two variables and possibly one that might be causing the other. It examines the impact of other variables on the relationship first observed, other times it disproves the existence of casual relationships all together. Once we understand the empirical relationship between two variables, we seek to understand the nature of that relationship through the effects produced by introducing other variables. Test variable (control variable: a variable that is held constant in an attempt to clarify further the relationship between two other variables, ex. Having discovered the relationship between education and prejudice, we might hold gender constant by examining the relationship between education and prejudice among men only and then among women only. Partial relationship: examines the relationship between two variables when examined in a subset of cases defined by a third variable, ex.