IRC 010

Research Methods

Scientific Explanation
Little Ch. 1 and KW Ch. 1

Why do we require Research Methods?

Dude, trust me, this is not why I became a GSIS major."

Fair enough, but there are at least three reasons for us to require a
course like this:
1. To make you a better consumer of information in the media
2. To make you a better consumer of information in your other
social science classes (evidence vs. rhetoric)
3. To get you started being a producer of knowledge, not just a
consumer

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Why do we care?
Social science as the study of the obvious?
Our everyday commonsense observations are generally
based on narrow, often biased preconceptions and
personal experiences
As a result, we often accept without criticism invalid
arguments about the characteristics of politics
Desirable to test hypotheses about the nature of political
and economic reality, even those seem self-evident
Can be applied to social science in general

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Ex. What we know about mass murderers

Definition: those who simultaneously kill >= four victims
Popular conceptions (and media portrayals):
Typically insane;
Express anger in a spontaneous and impulsive
outpouring of aggression;
Total strangers to the victims

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Data: FBI reports from 1976 to 1995 (N=697 mass killers)
Results:
Rarely insane: know exactly what they are doing and are not
driven to kill by the voice of demons
Random shooting in a public place as exceptions
Most killings occur within families (almost 40%) or among
acquaintances (another 40%)
E.g., wife and kids, bosses and co-workers
Methodical and selective (not impulsive)
Locations: small town, rural settings (neither city nor South)
Offenders: male, white, middle-aged

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

What is scientific explanation?

Explanandum (Y): Event or pattern to be explained;
Dependent variable or outcome variable
Explanans (X): Circumstances that are believed to explain
the event; Independent variable or input variable
What is the relation between explanandum and explanans
in a good explanation?

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Answering to Why necessary questions
Why do wars occur?
Why do people vote?
Who do countries trade?
We need to show that an event, regularity, or process is
necessary or predictable in the circumstances; or to identify the
initial conditions and causal processes that determined the
explanandum occurred.
A sufficient condition to produce explanandum?
Probabilistic statement of explanandum occurrence?

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Answering to Why questions commonly takes the form of
causal explanations
X causes the occurrence of wars (Y)
X causes people to vote (Y)
X causes countries to trade (Y)
Another type of explanation-seeking question: How possible
Neural networks
Social organizations
Economic institutions
We observe a capacity of the system and seek to explain the
internal workings of the system that produce this capacity.

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Answering to How possible questions commonly takes the
form of functional explanations of parts of the system
A kind of causal explanation
We seek to explain the causal properties of the subsystems
to show how these subsystems contributed to the capacity
of the larger system.
Note that good social science research starts with good
research questions.
Why-necessary and how-possible questions
Why is your question worth investigating?
Why is it interesting and important?

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Logical structure of scientific explanation:
Covering-law model
Given event or regularity can be assumed under one or
more general laws
Event or regularity is not accidental but rather derives from
some more basic general law regulating the phenomenon

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

1. Deductive-nomological model of explanation (Hempel 1965)

Universal generalization
Deterministic
L (one or more universal laws)
C (one or more statements of background circumstances)
----------(Deductively entails)----------E (statement of the fact or regularity to be explained)

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Deductive-nomological model: Sufficient conditions
X
T
T
F
F

Y:

X implies Y

T
F
T
F

True
False
True (vacuously)
True (vacuously)

In this deductive logic, if one needs to show that X does not

imply Y, he/she can show the existence of T but F case.
Proof by contradiction: suppose Y is not True. Then show X is
not True.
Ex 1. Sum of an even integer and a non-even integer a
non-even integer
Ex 2. Democratic Peace?: X (Democratic dyads) Y (Peace)

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Ex. Deductive-nomological model of explanation
Observation: Low-level government employees (LLGE) are the
ones who got involved in violent riots against the state in colonial
Vietnam
Composition of the class in society

Why did low-level government employees (LLGE) support

violent attacks on the state in colonial Vietnam, in contrast to
both better-paid superiors (HLGE) and the less-well-paid
unskilled workers in the city (W)?
Theory of relative deprivation (Gurr 1968)

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Theory of relative deprivation (Gurr 1968)
Discrepancy between expectations and capabilities
LLGE income expectations: HLGE, while their incomes
tied to the same economic forces that govern W
When the cost of W falls, incomes of LLGE falls as well
LLGE become militant because expectations dont match
their incomes
Violence as a choice when nothing is available
Expectations
of LLGE
Real income of LLGE

Revolutionary point

Time

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Any objections?
Theory:
Is it generally true that militant political behavior
results from relative deprivation?
Counter evidence? Does it invalidate the theory?
Application:
Evidence that LLGE income expectations = HLGE

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

2. Inductive-statistical model of explanation
Some scientific laws are statistical rather than universal
L (one or more statistical laws)
C (one or more statements of background circumstances)
----------(makes very likely)----------E (statement of the fact or regularity to be explained)
Possible for the premises to be true yet the conclusion false
D-N: why necessary but I-S: why probable

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Statistical thinking will one day be as

necessary for efficient citizenship as the
ability to read and write.
H.G. Wells (1895)

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Explanation vs. Description
Not all social science research pursue explanations.
Examples of non-explanatory social science research:
What were the chief characteristic of the Chinese population
in the early 1940s?
Does US foreign policy ever make use of food as a weapon?
Are labor unions effective at increasing safety standards?

Answers to factual questions can be useful. BUT, our class

will focus on explanatory research

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Why do we need scientific approach ?
What is not scientific? Just the facts or descriptive approach
Constantly changing political environment
Understanding why changes have come about and their likely
impacts
Key: Model based approach in which the concepts of interest
become variables that are causally linked together by theories

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Models of social science?
Models are simplifications.
the very unrealism of a model, if properly constructed, is
what makes it useful. The models developed below are
intended to serve much the same function as a street map of a
city. If one compares a map of a city to the real topography of
that city, it is certain that what is represented in the map is a
highly unrealistic portrayal of what the city actually looks like.
The map utterly distorts what is really there and leaves out
numerous details about what a particular area looks like. But it
is precisely because the map distorts reality because it
abstracts away from a host of details about what is really there
that it is a useful tool. A map that attempted to portray the full
details of a particular area would be too cluttered to be useful
in finding a particular location... (Rogers 2006, p 276)

What should we focus on?

Social science is not history. Why not?

Historians place much less emphasis on general causes,
and more emphasis on specific events
Social scientists, by contrast, emphasize general
phenomena that could occur again.
Ex: What caused World War I? vs. Why do nations go to war?
Ex: Secret of Obama victory vs. Effects of war and economic
crisis on election outcomes
More generally speaking, in social science we ask: Can you
drop the proper nouns (and dates)?

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

The road to scientific knowledge

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

1.

Causal theory
Hypothesis
Research design
Testing
Evaluation of hypothesis
Evaluation of causal theory
Scientific knowledge

Causal theory

A tentative conjecture about the causes of some

phenomenon of interest

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

2 ~ 6.

Hypothesis testing

Most rigorous tests

Compare scientists with lawyers in terms of the

approach to evidence:

Lawyers develops a strategy to prove their case,

and this goal of proving a desired result
determines their approach to evidence

Scientists should be neutral (Can we?);

Scientific confidence in a theory is achieved only
after hypotheses derived from a theory have
passed the most rigorous tests

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

7.

Scientific knowledge

obs=87
Pid
pid_m
pid_f

pid
1.00
0.17
0.26

pid~m

partyi~f

1.00
0.64

1.00

Kuhn (1962): Paradigm shift

Scientific fields go through cycles of accumulating knowledge based on
a set of shared assumptions and commonly accepted theories about
the way that the world works

Ex1. Astronomy:

P1: Earth is the center of the known universe

P2 (Copernicus): Sun is the center of the known universe

Ex2. Presidential campaigns in US

P1 (1940s): Voters heavily influenced by presidential campaigns

Surveys: Most voters had made up their minds before campaigning

P2 (Niemi & Jennings 1974): Stable attachments of schoolchildren

to political parties

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

From theory to hypothesis

Independent variable (X)
(Concept)

Causal theory

(Operationalization)
Independent variable
(Measured)

Dependent variable (Y)

(Concept)
(Operationalization)

Hypothesis

Dependent variable
(Measured)

Ex. Theory of economic voting

Question: Incumbent presidents will fare better when the

economy is relatively healthy?

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Ex. Theory of economic voting

Question: Incumbent presidents will fare better when the

economy is relatively healthy?

Dependent variable: Outcome of presidential elections

Independent variable: State of the economy

Causal theory: Voters hold the president responsible for

management of the national economy; When the economy is
performing poorly, few voters will support the incumbent
candidate

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Ex. Theory of economic voting

Operationalization (measurement of concepts):

DV: Incumbent party vote percentage (Y)

IV: One year real economic growth (X)

Hypothesis: Relationship between X and Y

Statistical hypothesis testing

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Ex. Theory of economic voting

Hypothesis: What would you expect to see based on the

theory of economic voting?

Incumbent
party vote
percentage

One-year real economic growth

Hypothesis: Y increases as X increases

The Economy, the War in Iraq and the 2004 Presidential Election (Hibbs)

Scientific Study of Social Inquiry

Rules of the road to scientific knowledge about science:

1.

Make your theory causal

2.

Develop theories before examining data

3.

Consider only empirical evidence

4.

Avoid normative argument

5.

Pursue both generality and parsimony