There is not one singular truth that is true for everyone, but many truths created and shared by people. That seems straightforward, right? Well, what if two different people saw the same event from the exact same viewpoint and came up with two totally different explanations about what caused what? A social constructionist would say that both people are correct. In causality, we would report what people tell us so that we can understand what caused what.
Both paradigms are correct, though incomplete, viewpoints on the social world and social science.Ī researcher operating in the social constructionist paradigm would view truth as subjective. You’ll remember the positivist paradigm as the one that believes in objectivity and social constructionist paradigm as the one that believes in subjectivity. Think back to our chapter on paradigms, which were analytic lenses comprised of assumptions about the world. How can that be? How could there be many ways to understand causality? It seems simple, but you may be surprised to learn there is more than one way to explain how one thing causes another. In other words, it is about cause and effect. Causality refers to the idea that one event, behavior, or belief will result in the occurrence of another subsequent event, behavior, or belief. A study on an intervention to prevent child abuse is trying to draw a connection between the intervention and changes in child abuse. Most social scientific studies attempt to provide some kind of causal explanation. Define hypothesis, be able to state a clear hypothesis, and discuss the respective roles of quantitative and qualitative research when it comes to hypotheses.Describe the difference between and provide examples of independent, dependent, and control variables.Identify, define, and describe each of the main criteria for nomothetic causal relationships.Describe the role of causality in quantitative research as compared to qualitative research.Define and provide examples of idiographic and nomothetic causal relationships.