Human-Centered Data Science: An Introduction by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Computers, Data Science, General, Science, Ethics, Data Analytics
ISBN: 9780262543217
Google: 6LtNEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2022-03-01T20:40:49+00:00

Quantitative Social Science Methods

Quantitative social science methods are anchored in a theory of knowledge that sees the world, like Durkheim did, as consisting of social facts that can be measured or known through careful, testable ways of observing phenomena.

Quantitative methods analyze numerical data using mathematical or statistical approaches. In the social sciences, the term quantitative methods groups together many different types of data sources (surveys, documents) to focus on the data type (numerical) and the techniques of analysis (primarily statistical). Types of quantitative methods include the analysis of survey data, the analysis of documents through quantitative content analysis, and the analysis of data from experiments. Quantitative data can also be obtained from collections of documents, such as extracting quantitative medical test outcomes from electronic health records or house sizes, costs, and attributes from real estate listings.

Quantitative social science research shares some common traits. The research is often designed with a clearly defined research question at the beginning of the project. Data takes the form of numbers and statistics and is presented in nontextual form. The goals are to generalize from the study—that is to say, to use the results to say something about the concepts on a wider scale, predict future outcomes, or show how two or more concepts relate to one another. The results are based on samples that represent a larger population, such as 1,000 likely voters in the next election surveyed to reflect the opinions of people who are likely to vote.

See the recommendations at the end of this chapter for more in-depth coverage of these methods.

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