Computer Science 494 Research Methods Comp 494 Final - Open Book Study Guide everything you need to know Athabasca University
UNIT 1: What Is Research? Research Problems, Hypotheses and Literature Reviews Theoretical: concerned with developing, exploring or testing the theories or ideas that social researchers have about how the world operates. The definition of theoretical is something that is based on an assumption or opinion. An example of theoretical is lower interest rates will boost the housing market. Empirical: based on observations and measurements of reality – on what we perceive of the world around us. Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. Nomothetic: refers to laws or rules that pertain to the general case (nomos in Greek) and is contrasted with the term “idiographic” which refers to laws or rules that relate to individuals (idios means ‘self’ or ‘characteristic of an individual’ in Greek). In any event, the point here is that most social research is concerned with the nomothetic – the general case – rather than the individual. We often study individuals, but usually we are interested in generalizing to more than just the individual. In our post-positivist view of science, we no longer regard certainty as attainable. Thus, the fourth big word that describes much contemporary social research is probabilistic or based on probabilities. The inferences that we make in social research have probabilities associated with them – they are seldom meant to be considered covering laws that pertain to all cases. Part of the reason we have seen statistics become so dominant in social research is that it allows us to estimate probabilities for the situations we study. This study source was downloaded by 100000897439502 from CourseHero.com on 05-28-2025 06:57:18 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/114065658/Comp-494-study-guidedocx/