School of Public Administration

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• School of Public Administration Policy
• Dr. Kaifeng Yang

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• When I think about a scientist, I think of ____
• If I were going to be a scientist, I should like
  to be the kind of scientist who ___
• If I were going to be a scientist, I should not
  like to be the kind of scientist who ___
• When I think of a social scientist, I think of ___

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• Is Public Administration a science?

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Scientific Inquiry Characteristics

• Empirical verification
• Non-normative
• Transmissible
• General
• Explanatory
• Probabilistic
• Provisional

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• Thou shall not kill
• Al Gore received more popular votes in the 2000
  presidential election than G.W.Bush
• The death penalty deters crime
• All people are created equal
• There will always be some people living in
  poverty no matter how hard government tries to
  eliminate it
• Catholics are more likely to vote than
  Protestants
• People in the Middle East would be far better off
  if they lived under democratic governments

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Scientific Reasoning

• Induction
• Bottom up
• Probabilistic and uncertainty
• Degree of match
• Validity and generalizability
• Deduction
• Top down
• Valid or invalid
• Alternative theories or biased evidence

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• Three main concerns as the researcher narrows in
  on researchable questions
• What entities (individual, people, groups,
  formal organizations, nations) are to be studied
• What aspects or characteristics of these entities
  are of interest
• What kinds of relationships among the
  characteristics are anticipated.

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Units of Analysis

• The entities (objects or events) under study
• Include individual people, social groupings,
  social artifacts
• The research is to compare the units of analysis
  The data or the variable is about the units of
  analysis
• It is important to identify accurately the unit
  of analysis since confusion over units may result
  in false conclusions about research findings

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Unit of Analysis

• The entity about whom or which the researcher
  gathers information.
• Not The entity from which the researcher
  gathers
• information.
• Rather the information about what?
• It is the analysis you do in your study that
  determines what the unit is.
• The unit is simply what or who to be described or
  analyzed

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Units of Analysis Examples

• If you are comparing the children in two
  classrooms on achievement test scores, the unit
  is the individual child because you have a score
  for each child.
• On the other hand, if you are comparing the two
  classes on classroom climate, your unit of
  analysis is the classroom, because you only have
  a score for the class as a whole and not for each
  individual student.

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• Related issues
• The use of aggregate data combining information
  about individuals to describe the social unit to
  which they belong.
• U.S. News rankings, individual students- college
  as a whole.
• Ecological fallacy
• This occurs when relationships between
  properties of groups or geographic areas are used
  to make inference about the individual behaviors
  of the people within those groups or areas.
• Misleading to draw conclusions about
  individual-level processes from aggregate or
  group-level data.

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Conceptualization

• The process we specify what we mean when we
  use particular terms. It involves describing the
  essential features of the terms. Sometimes, it
  involves indicators well be using to measure our
  concept and the different aspects of the concept
  (dimensions).
• Indicator a sign of the presence or absence of
  the concept
• Dimension a specifiable aspect of a concept

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How to Conceptualize Religiosity?

• A religious person A
  non-religious person
• ...
  .. ..

A Template The concept of _____is defined as the
extent to which ____exhibit the characteristic of
_________________
The concept of religiosity is defined as the
extent to which individuals exhibit the
characteristic of attending religious services.
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Variables

• There are two types of explanatory variables
  dependent and independent
• 1) Dependent variable (DV)
• the one the researcher is interested in
  explaining and predicting
• variation in the dependent variable is thought
  to depend on or to be influenced by certain other
  variables
• 2) Independent variable (IV)
• independent variable refers to variables that
  influence or explain the dependent variable
• if we think in terms of cause and effect, the IV
  is the presumed cause and the DV the presumed
  effect.

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IV DV

• Presumed cause
• Stimulus
• Predicted from
• Antecedent
• Manipulated
• Predictor

• Presumed effect
• Response
• Predicted to
• Consequence
• Measured outcome
• Criterion

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Variables (4)

• 3) Antecedent variable
• the one that occurs prior in time to both
  independent and dependent variable
• 4) Intervening variable
• the one that is an effect of the IV and a cause
  of the DV

Antecedent
Independent
Dependent
Independent
Intervening
Dependent
Independent
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Variables

• 5) Control variable
• the one that is held constant, or prevented from
  varying, during the course of observation or
  analysis to limit the focus of the research or to
  test hypotheses pertaining to specific subgroups
• a means of ruling out variables that are not of
  immediate interest but that might otherwise
  explain part of the phenomenon that the
  investigator wishes to understand
• 6) Quantitative vs. Qualitative variable
• quantitative- if values or categories consist of
  numbers
• qualitative- has discrete categories, usually
  designed by words or labels

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Relationships

• Features of relationships in social science
• they always involve two or more entities.
• 2) the pairs or combinations of things usually
  occur and change together.
• the manner in which the variables change or vary
  together will depend on whether the variables are
  qualitative or quantitative.
• 3) four properties of relationships strength,
  directionality, linearity, and statistical
  significance.

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Relationships

• Relationships among quantitative variables
• we can measure not only the strength of the
  relationship but also two other aspects of
  relationship direction and linearity
• positive (direct) vs. negative (inverse)
  relationship
• linear vs. non-linear relationship

Variable Y
Linear Relationships
Variable X
Variable Y
Curvilinear Relationships
Variable X
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Relationships

• Measure of strength and direction of relationship
• correlation coefficient (r)
• a common statistical measure of the strength and
  direction of linear relationships between two
  quantitative variables
• ranging from -1.00 to 1.00
• the signs indicate the direction of the
  relationship
• the magnitude of the coefficient, ignoring the
  sign, indicates the strength of association

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Relationships

• Causal relationships in social science
• 1) association
• variables must be associated in a statistical
  sense
• meaningful causal relationship, not necessarily
  perfect association
• 2) direction of influence
• a cause must precede its effect
• at least direction of influence should be from
  cause to effect
• 3) non-spuriousness (elimination of rival
  hypotheses)
• spurious relationship occurs when a correlation
  has been produced by a third factor and neither
  of the variables involved in the correlation has
  influenced the other.

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Stating Problems and Hypotheses

• Hypotheses
• Tentative answers to research questions.
• More formally, expected but unconfirmed
  relationship between two or more variables.
• While stated in a variety of ways, all
  hypotheses should speculate about the nature and
  form of relationship.
• Include two aspects
• 1) which variable causes, explains, or predicts
  the other
• 2) how changes in one variable are related to
  changes in the other

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Stating Problems and Hypotheses

• Forms of expressing testable hypotheses
• 1) If-then (conditional) statements
• 2) Mathematical statements
• 3) Continuous statements
• 4) Difference statements
• It is important to know which variable is
  presumed to cause the other
• How a hypothesis is expressed in a given study
  will depend on several factors
• Researchers discretion, the present state of
  knowledge about research problem, and whether
  qualitative or quantitative variables are
  involved.
• Regardless the form of expression, it should
  indicate at least the form of the relationship
  between variables and, ideally, should specify
  the causal linkage between variables.

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Hypothesis Templates

• In comparing units of analysis, those having
  one value on the independent variable will be
  more likely to have one value on the dependent
  variable than will those having a different
  value on the independent variable.
• E.g. In comparing individuals, those who
  are women will be more likely to favor a
  handgun ban than those who are men.
• Another Template the more/lessthe more/less
• E.g. The more intelligent a person is, the
  more likely he or she is to support civil
  liberties.

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Pitfalls

• Affirmative vs. question
• Do democratic nations provoke wars?
• Democracies are less likely to provoke wars with
  other nations than dictatorships

• Evaluative statement
• Democracy is the best form of government

• Comparative value statement
• Swedes are less moral than Americans
• Prescriptive Value Statement
• The campaign finance laws should be changed

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Pitfalls

• Compound Hypotheses
• The poor and alienated are unlikely to vote

• Tautology
• Liberal members of the House of Representatives
  receive high ratings from liberal interest groups

• Narrow Hypotheses
• Northern Ireland has experienced conflict because
  of religious differences

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How about These?

• In comparing individuals, some people are more
  likely to donate money to political candidates
  than are other people.
• In comparing individuals, gender and abortion
  attitudes are related.
• Because of important cultural changes that began
  in the 1960s, many current political conflicts
  are based on generational differences.
• Should people support gun-control?
• Are there more democrats than republicans in
  Florida?

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must transform questions into hypotheses

• Do peoples attitudes toward the environment vary
  by income?
• People with higher incomes have stronger
  pro-environment attitudes than people with lower
  incomes
• The lower ones income, the more one cares about
  the environment
• Peoples environment attitudes are not related to
  their income

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Group Practice Identifying variables and UOA

• Tone of campaign advertising
• closeness of election
• Voter turnout
• Interest in politics
• Perceived difference b/t major parties
• Turning out to vote

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Group Practice Evaluating the articles

• For the chosen article
• Why do you like it most?
• Identify IV, DV
• Identify unit of analysis and evaluate whether it
  is appropriate
• Identify hypotheses and evaluate whether they are
  well-written and make sense

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Groups Design Assignment????

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