COMM 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Inductive Reasoning, Dependent And Independent Variables, Operationalization

• School: U of M
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 101
• Professor: Julia Lippman

Document Summary

Turing social and media processes into quantitative data. Deduction: going from theory to hypothesis to data collection: take and idea and see if it holds up to new facts (broad > speci c) Induction: analyzing data and creating a conclusion and modifying the theory: take a bunch of facts and decide what they suggest (speci c > broad) Deduction is stronger evidence than induction: both are necessary to create scienti c understanding, only deduction can falsify a claim. Take away #1: the scienti c method includes both deduction and induction. Deduction: the basic process: start big (theory, de ne and re ne the question (hypothesis, look for evidence (data collection) Data: two forms: things we can describe, and things we can measure. Descriptive data (meanings, symbols, history, ideologies) only tell us about speci c cases. Measurable data (attitudes, behaviors, frequency of events, how things relate) can give us insight into generalities.