POS 3713 Midterm 1 – Political Science 3713 Study Guide Questions and Notes from Class

POS3713 Midterm 1 – Study Guide Questions and Notes from Class POS3713 Midterm 1 – Study Guide Questions 1. How do we know what we know? a. Epistemology – how you know what you know b. Ways of knowing something i. Precedent – look at the past ii. Deferring to authority – look to scholars and scientists iii. Intuition/Common Sense – what does your gut say iv. The only thing that stands up time and time again is: observation 2. What do political scientists do, exactly? a. Look at relationships between individuals b. Why analyze relationships? i. Want to understand as much of the political world as possible ii. Rely on observation iii. Design research to collect data c. Political scientists develop causal theories about the political world and test them scientifically (the scientific method) i. Create theory ii. Form testable hypothesis iii. Carry out research to test hypothesis iv. Evaluate research v. Modification and extension 3. What is the difference between descriptive and causal inference? a. Causal Inference: Learning something about how the world works that we didn't know before i. Unknown causal relation between two or more variables b. Descriptive Inference: Learning something about the state of the world we didn't know before i. Unknown fact about a single variable 1. Inference is by definition uncertain