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A concise introduction to the fundamental concepts of social scientific thinking and research, The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking is a classic text that makes scientific thinking, research methods, and statistics accessible to undergraduates at a common sense level. This text is intended for use in a broad array of the social sciences, including political science, sociology, and psychology.
In this Edition:
Updated research, findings, and techniques are included.
Additions to sections on research techniques to include even more information on computer-driven statistical tools.
A new Appendix A provides a discussion of America's declining "social capital" in order to illustrate how scholars have approached the changing relationship of community involvement and political participation.
Appendix B explores the causes and consequences of trust in government in order to illustrate how observations of correlation are used to assess explanations of causality.
Our Mission: At Wadsworth Political Science, our goal is to publish current, relevant programs that help instructors create lively, engaging classrooms. We aim to further inspire those students who are passionate about the discipline, and to motivate beginning students by showing them that they can, indeed, make a difference.
Wadsworth, a part of Cengage Learning, publishes textbooks and programs for all of the course areas in the Political Science curriculum.
About the Authors ix
1 Thinking Scientifically 1
Why Bother to Be Systematic? 4
The Role of Reasoned judgment and Opinion 5
The Role of Imagination, Intuition, and Custom 6
2 The Elements of Science 11
The Origin and Utility of Concepts 12
What Is a Variable? 15
The Hypothesis 24
The Scientific Method 27
The Many Roles of Theory 29
3 Strategies 38
Thinking Over the Problem 40
Reality Testing 46
Understanding the Results 50
4 Refinements 58
5 Measuring Variables and Relationships 78
Measuring Variables: Levels of Measurement 79
Measuring the Significance and Representativeness of Data: Probability, Sampling, and Problems in Polling 84
Measuring Relationships Between Variables: Association and Correlation 92
Computers and Statistics 113
6 Reflections: Back to the Roots 118
Factuality, Reality, and Actuality 119
Morality and the Limits of Science 122
Of Scientists, Science, and Paradigms 127
Making Social Science Serve Human Needs 129
The Radicalism of Science 132
Science and Politics 133
Appendix A Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America 138
Appendix B Trust in Government: The United States in Comparative Perspective 167