C&M Panels at APSA 2014
C&M is co-sponsoring (with Qualitative Methods) the following two two panels at APSA. Unfortunately they are both scheduled for the same time: Thursday, September 2nd, at 2:00 PM.
22.58 CHALLENGES OF CONCEPT-FORMATION AND MEASUREMENT
Thu 2:00 pm
Room: Hilton, Sutter Room
Chair and Discussant: Svend-Erik Skaaning, Aarhus University
Papers:
The Consequences of Ignoring Kind-Differences When Measuring Concepts
Derek Beach, University of Aarhus
Analyzing National Meta-Narratives: The Cases of Egypt, Syria and Iraq
Yael Rivka Kaplan, Hebrew University
Shaul Rafael Shenhav, Hebrew University of Jeruselem
Clarifying Multi-level Governance
Pier Domenico Tortola, University of Milan
22.59 VARIETIES OF DESCRIPTION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Thu 2:00 pm Room: Hilton, Union Square 5 & 6
Session description:
In social science methodology, description is the poor cousin of hypothesis testing. “Mere” description is widely viewed as a necessary but unexciting, pre-methodological step on the road to generating testable hypothesis. This panel brings together contributions that challenge this mischaracterization of description. The papers present the surprisingly wide range of descriptive inferences techniques used across political science and thereby challenge the widely held notion that the description is the exclusive purvey of qualitative scholars. Furthermore, the contrast of qualitative and quantitative forms of description also will bring into conversation how these different approaches handle the challenge of making sound descriptive inferences and what criteria they employ to evaluate such inferences. The goal is to show that description is neither merely qualitatively, nor that it is a merely a pre-methodological craft. Description instead is an element of social science analysis that rests on methodological foundations that should be just as explicit and sound as those used for causal inference.
Chair: Vivekinan Ashok
Discussant: Jan Kubik, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Papers:
What before Why: Taking Quantitative Descriptive Inference Seriously
Amelia Hoover Green, Drexel University
Sequence Analytic Techniques for Visualizing Discrete Patterns
Matthew Charles Wilson, West Virginia University
Philippe Blanchard, University of Warwick
Visual Inference for Comparative Research
Richard Traunmuller, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
Measuring Social Capital at the Intersection of Individuals and Society
Vasabjit Banerjee, Mississippi State University
Carolyn Ethel Holmes, Indiana University, Bloomington
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