A
good theory should allow us to make statements about the state of the world.
Statements about the world are good things: they allow us to make sense of our
world, and to make decisions that affect our future. One current example is
global warming. Being able to make a definitive statement that global warming
is happening, and that it is caused by certain practices in society, allows us
to change these practices and, hopefully, avert catastrophe. However, not all
statements are ones that can be tested using science. Scientific statements are
ones that can be verified with reference to empirical evidence, whereas
non-scientific statements are ones that cannot be empirically tested. So, statements
such as ‘Lindt chocolate is the best food’, and ‘This is the worst writ up in
the world’ are all non-scientific; they cannot be proved or disproved.
Scientific statements can be confirmed or disconfirmed empirically. ‘Watching Curb
Your Enthusiasm makes you happy’, ‘having sex increases levels of the
neurotransmitter dopamine’ and ‘Velociraptors ate meat’ are all things that can
be tested empirically (provided you can quantify and measure the variables concerned).
Non-scientific statements can sometimes be altered to become scientific
statements, so ‘The Beatles were the most influential band ever’ is non-scientific
(because it is probably impossible to quantify ‘influence’ in any meaningful
way) but by changing the statement to ‘The Beatles were the best-selling band
ever’ it becomes testable (we can collect data about worldwide record sales and
establish whether The Beatles have, in
fact,
sold more records than any other music artist). Karl Popper, the famous
philosopher of science, believed that non-scientific statements were nonsense,
and had no place in science. Good theories should, therefore, produce hypotheses
that are scientific statements.
Some Important Terms
When
doing research there are some important generic terms for variables that you
will encounter:
Independent variable: A
variable thought to be the cause of some effect. This term is usually used in
experimental research to denote a variable that the experimenter has
manipulated.
Dependent variable: A
variable thought to be affected by changes in an independent variable. You can
think of this variable as
an
outcome.
Predictor variable: A
variable thought to predict an outcome variable. This is basically another term
for independent variable (although some people won’t like me saying that; I
think life would be easier if we talked only about predictors and outcomes).
Outcome variable: A
variable thought to change as a function of changes in a predictor variable.
This term could be synonymous with ‘dependent variable’ for the sake of an easy
life.
for training and help on SPSS, feel free to contact abataysoftwarewizard Research Institute.
08130582034
abataysoftwarewizard@gmail.com
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