Summary of Gary King, Robert O. Keohane & Sidney Verba's Designing Social Inquiry

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 This book is about research in the social sciences. It is not a guide to specific research tasks such as the design of surveys, conduct of field work, or analysis of statistical data. Rather, it focuses on the essential logic underlying all social scientific research.

#2 The styles of quantitative and qualitative research are very different. Quantitative research uses numbers and statistical methods, and it tends to be based on numerical measurements of specific aspects of phenomena. Qualitative research, in contrast, covers a wide range of approaches, and it relies on intensive interviews or depth analysis of historical materials.

#3 The difference between quantitative and qualitative research is only stylistic. All good research can be understood to derive from the same underlying logic of inference. Both quantitative and qualitative research can be systematic and scientific.

#4 The rules of scientific inference are the same for all types of research, even non-statistical research. They are often more clearly stated in the style of quantitative research, since the abstract, and even unrealistic, nature of statistical models makes the rules of inference stand out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669373407

IRB Media

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Insights on Gary King and Robert O. Keohane & Sidney Verba's Designing Social Inquiry

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 24

Insights from Chapter 25

Insights from Chapter 26

Insights from Chapter 27

Insights from Chapter 28

Insights from Chapter 29

Insights from Chapter 30

Insights from Chapter 31

Insights from Chapter 32

Insights from Chapter 33

Insights from Chapter 34

Insights from Chapter 35

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

This book is about research in the social sciences. It is not a guide to specific research tasks such as the design of surveys, conduct of field work, or analysis of statistical data. Rather, it focuses on the essential logic underlying all social scientific research.

#2

The styles of quantitative and qualitative research are very different. Quantitative research uses numbers and statistical methods, and it tends to be based on numerical measurements of specific aspects of phenomena. Qualitative research, in contrast, covers a wide range of approaches, and it relies on intensive interviews or depth analysis of historical materials.

#3

The difference between quantitative and qualitative research is only stylistic. All good research can be understood to derive from the same underlying logic of inference. Both quantitative and qualitative research can be systematic and scientific.

#4

The rules of scientific inference are the same for all types of research, even non-statistical research. They are often more clearly stated in the style of quantitative research, since the abstract, and even unrealistic, nature of statistical models makes the rules of inference stand out.

#5

The rules of inference that we discuss are not relevant to all issues that are of significance to social scientists. Many of the most important questions concerning political life are philosophical rather than empirical, and thus cannot be answered using the rules of scientific inference.

#6

The four characteristics of good research are that it is designed to make inferences about the world, it uses public methods to generate and analyze data, and it is not private. Much social research in the qualitative style follows fewer precise rules of research procedure or of inference.

#7

Scientific research is a social enterprise. It is impossible to reach perfectly certain conclusions from uncertain data, but the goal of inference is to use quantitative or qualitative data to learn about the world that produced them.

#8

The world is not naturally divided into simple and complex sets of events. The perceived complexity of a situation depends on how well we can simplify reality, and our capacity to simplify depends on whether we can specify outcomes and explanatory variables in