Causation and Research Design

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Causation and Research Design
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Association

• Covariation or Correlation
• Not necessarily causation
• Spurious Relationships

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Causation
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Nomothetic

• No single cases
• Probabalistic
• Need Variation

• Criteria
• Association
• Time order
• Non-spuriousness
• Necessity
• Sufficiency
• Mechanism

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Idiographic

• Idiosyncratic
• One Case
• Causal Path

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Variables - Again

• Independent
• Dependent
• Antecedent
• Intervening
• Control

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Null Hypothesis

• H1 our theoretical hypothesis
• H0 the null hypothesis

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Research Design

• Why write it out?

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Research Designs

• Explicitness
• Alternate Rival Hypotheses
• Real proof
• Logically impossible
• Methodological decisions

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Types of Research Designs

• Experimental
• 2 groups
• Experimental
• Control
• Stimulus
• Control over conditions and groups

• Quasi-Experimental
• No Control over Stimuli
• No Control over Groups
• Simulate Experiments

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Types of Research Designs Take Two

• Simple Post Test
• Natural Experiment
• Times Series
• Longitudinal
• Panel
• Cross-Sectional
• Formal Models

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Good Research Designs

• Statement of Purpose
• Statement of Hypotheses
• Your own Hypotheses
• Alternate Rival Hypotheses
• Specification of Variables
• Operationalization and Instrumentation
• Statement on Organization of data collection
• Methods of analysis