Social Inquiry and Bayesian Inference PDF Download

Author: Tasha Fairfield
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421644
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 683

View

Book Description
Provides guidance for Bayesian updating in case study, process-tracing, and comparative research, in order to refine intuition and improve inferences from qualitative evidence.

Author: Gary King
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691034710
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

View

Book Description
Designing Social Inquiry focuses on improving qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. What are the right questions to ask? How should you define and make inferences about causal effects? How can you avoid bias? How many cases do you need, and how should they be selected? What are the consequences of unavoidable problems in qualitative research, such as measurement error, incomplete information, or omitted variables? What are proper ways to estimate and report the uncertainty of your conclusions?

Author: Henry E. Brady
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442203455
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429

View

Book Description
With innovative new chapters on process tracing, regression analysis, and natural experiments, the second edition of Rethinking Social Inquiry further extends the reach of this path-breaking book. The original debate with King, Keohane, and Verba_now updated_remains central to the volume, and the new material illuminates evolving discussions of essential methodological tools. Thus, process tracing is often invoked as fundamental to qualitative analysis, but is rarely applied with precision. Pitfalls of regression analysis are sometimes noted, but often are inadequately examined. And the complex assumptions and trade-offs of natural experiments are poorly understood. The second edition extends the methodological horizon through exploring these critical tools. A distinctive feature of this edition is the online placement of four chapters from the prior edition, all focused on the dialogue with King, Keohane, and Verba. Also posted online are exercises for teaching process tracing and understanding process tracing.

Author: Gary King
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521542807
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 436

View

Book Description
Drawing upon the recent explosion of research in the field, a diverse group of scholars surveys the latest strategies for solving ecological inference problems, the process of trying to infer individual behavior from aggregate data. The uncertainties and information lost in aggregation make ecological inference one of the most difficult areas of statistical inference, but these inferences are required in many academic fields, as well as by legislatures and the Courts in redistricting, marketing research by business, and policy analysis by governments. This wide-ranging collection of essays offers many fresh and important contributions to the study of ecological inference.

Author: Andrew Bennett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107044529
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

View

Book Description
This book provides empirically grounded conceptual, design and practical advice on conducting process tracing, a key method of qualitative research.

Author: Thad Dunning
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107017661
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 379

View

Book Description
The first comprehensive guide to natural experiments, providing an ideal introduction for scholars and students.

Author: Colin Elman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108486770
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 569

View

Book Description
A wide-ranging discussion of factors that impede the cumulation of knowledge in the social sciences, including problems of transparency, replication, and reliability. Rather than focusing on individual studies or methods, this book examines how collective institutions and practices have (often unintended) impacts on the production of knowledge.

Author: Erica S. Simmons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108967086
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

View

Book Description
Qualitative comparative methods – and specifically controlled qualitative comparisons – are central to the study of politics. They are not the only kind of comparison, though, that can help us better understand political processes and outcomes. Yet there are few guides for how to conduct non-controlled comparative research. This volume brings together chapters from more than a dozen leading methods scholars from across the discipline of political science, including positivist and interpretivist scholars, qualitative methodologists, mixed-methods researchers, ethnographers, historians, and statisticians. Their work revolutionizes qualitative research design by diversifying the repertoire of comparative methods available to students of politics, offering readers clear suggestions for what kinds of comparisons might be possible, why they are useful, and how to execute them. By systematically thinking through how we engage in qualitative comparisons and the kinds of insights those comparisons produce, these collected essays create new possibilities to advance what we know about politics.

Author: Richard A. Chechile
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262360705
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 473

View

Book Description
An introduction to the Bayesian approach to statistical inference that demonstrates its superiority to orthodox frequentist statistical analysis. This book offers an introduction to the Bayesian approach to statistical inference, with a focus on nonparametric and distribution-free methods. It covers not only well-developed methods for doing Bayesian statistics but also novel tools that enable Bayesian statistical analyses for cases that previously did not have a full Bayesian solution. The book's premise is that there are fundamental problems with orthodox frequentist statistical analyses that distort the scientific process. Side-by-side comparisons of Bayesian and frequentist methods illustrate the mismatch between the needs of experimental scientists in making inferences from data and the properties of the standard tools of classical statistics.

Author: Deborah G. Mayo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108563309
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 503

View

Book Description
Mounting failures of replication in social and biological sciences give a new urgency to critically appraising proposed reforms. This book pulls back the cover on disagreements between experts charged with restoring integrity to science. It denies two pervasive views of the role of probability in inference: to assign degrees of belief, and to control error rates in a long run. If statistical consumers are unaware of assumptions behind rival evidence reforms, they can't scrutinize the consequences that affect them (in personalized medicine, psychology, etc.). The book sets sail with a simple tool: if little has been done to rule out flaws in inferring a claim, then it has not passed a severe test. Many methods advocated by data experts do not stand up to severe scrutiny and are in tension with successful strategies for blocking or accounting for cherry picking and selective reporting. Through a series of excursions and exhibits, the philosophy and history of inductive inference come alive. Philosophical tools are put to work to solve problems about science and pseudoscience, induction and falsification.