Statistical Analysis Stack Exchange
Statistical Analysis Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [social-science]

For on-topic statistical questions involving social science. Please include also some statistical methods tag.

Wikipedia has an article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science with further references.

81 questions
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Implications of current debate on statistical significance

In the past few years, various scholars have raised a detrimental problem of scientific hypothesis testing, dubbed "researcher degree of freedom," meaning that scientists have numerous choices to make during their analysis that bias towards finding…
Heisenberg
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Data mining techniques in Obama's campaign

I came across this article about the data mining team in Obama's reelection campaign. Unfortunately, the article is very fuzzy about the actual machinery of the statistical algorithms. However, it sounded as if the general techniques are known in…
fabee
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What are differences between industrial statistics and social science statistics/econometrics that are potential stumbling blocks?

Main question up front: what are differences between econometrics/social science statistics that and industrial statistics that people switching between the two should be are of? I got a PhD in mathematical statistics in December and have a job now…
cgmil
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How to gently introduce epidemiologists/public health coworkers to advanced predictive modeling?

Coming from a social science and epidemiology background, my coworkers were trained on least squares regression, logistic regression, and survival analysis. They like to see 95% confidence intervals and p-values with the parameter coefficents, and…
RobertF
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Interpreting effect size

One of the most widely used interpretation of effect size is Cohen's $d$, as follows: $<.10$: trivial $[.10,.30]$: small to medium $[.30,.50]$: medium to large $>.50$: large to very large This appears to be the standard in psychology. I am…
Amarald
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Low $R^2$ value in social science or education research?

I'm looking for paper(s) that talk about "why low $R^2$ value is acceptable in social science or education research". Please point me to the right journal if you know one.
Amin
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Identifying fraudulent questionnaires

Questionaires are often used in social sciences. Many people try to complete them very quickly and very often they only "guess" answers. Is there any statistical technique or any research in this area, how to identify which questionnaires are…
sitems
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Do we really need a control group when we can compare the treatment group with the status quo?

Here I am not talking about medical research, where there is placebo effect need to be controlled with the blind design. In social science studies, we almost never do blind experiment. In this case, if we have data from all the subjects, do we…
Feng Jiang
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Which statistical topics to teach in European Studies study programme?

Next year, I will teach statistics in bachelor study programme European studies (Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava). According to programme description, the aim of the study is to acquire knowledge of basic…
sitems
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When is it valid to use race/ethnicity in causal inference?

It seems that often in social science, race is examined in causal terms, as researchers are interested in the differences between various ethnic groups in outcomes when controlling for other covariates. However, my understanding is that we actually…
Marcel
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When and why should psychologists use ordered probit models rather than the general linear model?

Psychologists often use the general linear model with ordinal independent/dependent variables (i.e. Likert scales to measure 'levels' of a psychological trait. For example, assigning numbers to the labels: "Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither,…
Henry Ward
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Correct algorithm for detecting outbreaks in conflict data

I'm currently working on a project researching whether Google Trends can predict conflict events in intrastate conflicts. Thus I have two different datasets; the weekly Google Trends search volume and the number of conflict events per week. My idea…
SamVimes
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Can I use a one way ANOVA with multiple categoricals as a response variable?

I do not know a lot about stats so forgive me. I have a dataset which has $N$ number of participants and their choice between 1, 2, and 3 at any given point. I want to analyze the distribution of the choices between 1, 2, and 3 by participants'…
Mike Stumpf
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Why don't researchers share their raw data for better science?

Publication bias. Reproducibility problem. Abusing statistical tests. These are some of the many criticisms received by all fields of science for a long time. If I read an article in Psychological Science and am sceptical of their results, or if I…
JetLag
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Model to use in assessing the responsiveness of a categorical variable to policy changes over time?

I am interested in determining if the decisionmaking of a particular government body was responsive to policy and statutory changes that occurred at known points in time. I can classify the decisions of this body as 1) rejected proposal; 2) accepted…
dubhousing
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