FRHD 3070 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Empirical Measure, Dependent And Independent Variables, Ecological Fallacy

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Family Relations and Human Development
• Course: FRHD 3070
• Professor: John Dwyer

Document Summary

Linear research path: research that proceeds in a clear, logical, step-by-step straight line; quantitative/positivist: topic and narrowed questions chosen mainly before research is conducted. Nonlinear research path: research that proceeds in a circular, back-and-forth manner; qualitative/interpretivist: looking for meaning, i. e. , translating languages (small differences may be important, more fluid, topic and questions emerge as research goes on. Qualitative design: the language of cases and contexts. People believe qualitative data is too soft and intangible, but it is not true. Quantitative design: the language of variables and hypotheses. Variable: concept or its empirical measure that varies; central idea in quantitative research: take on two or more values. I. e. , marital status is a variable with values such as married, single, divorced, etc: attributes: the categories or values of a variable. I. e. , male is an attribute for the variable gender . I. e. , when examining reasons for an increase in crime rate, crime rate is the dependent variable.