PO217 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Dependent And Independent Variables, Socioeconomic Status, Internal Consistency
Document Summary
Po 217 lecture #4 -> september 19th (fall 2017) Thinking and then testing; i. e. an assumption of how the world works: consider a rationalist"s perspective of thinking -> rationale leads to plausible outcomes, assumption proposition hypotheses. Criteria for evaluating theories: testability; a good theory has implications for testing. Operationalization: communicate -> would a reasonable person in that field understand, could they. Correlation or causation? (self explanatory: how do these test, observe, define matters within these concepts. What is a variable: anything that varies, unlimited values, empirically observable properties that take on different values. Variables versus concepts: variables require more specificity than concepts, they mean different things to different people, concepts may need a # of variables to represent a single concept, one concept may be represented by several different variables. I. e socio-economic status -> income, occupation or education as an index (variables) measured empirically.
