STA 2122- Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 26 pages long!)
Document Summary
Chapter 1: the theory & practice of social research lecture 1 01/11/2018. Statistics are a tool for empirical quantitative analysis. Value neutrality: one objective of social science research is to eliminate bias: the goal is not to find something particular. Theory: social scientists use theory in attempt to establish a link between what we observe and our understanding. Hypothesis: tentative answers to research questions, subject to empirical verification. Values: these are the possible outcomes for a single variable, different for different cases, numbers or name categories. Validity problems: describes an indicator of a concept. Reliability: the quality of a measuring instrument that would cause it to report the same value in successive observations of a given case. Nominal variables: simply name the different attributes constituting them. Ratio variables: share all the qualities associated with nominal and ordinal variables. Interval variables: quality of standard interval measurements but lack a genuine zero point.
