Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

STRATEGIES OF RESEARCH DESIGN

taking drugs and being suicidal, dropping out of
school, and engaging in violence. The supporters
argue that ending drug use will greatly reduce
suicide, dropouts, and violence. Others argue that
many people turn to drugs because of their emo-
tional problems or high levels of disorder of their
communities (e.g., high unemployment, unstable
families, high crime, few community services, lack
of civility). The people with emotional problems
or who live in disordered communities are also
more likely to commit suicide, drop out, and engage
in violence. This means that reducing emotional
problems and community disorder will cause ille-
gal drug use, dropping out, suicide, and violence to
decline greatly. Reducing drug taking alone will
have only a limited effect because it ignores the root
cause, which is not drugs. The “drugs-are-the-prob-
lem” argument is spurious because the initial rela-
tionship between taking illegal drugs and the
problems that advocates identify is misleading. The
emotional problems and community disorder are
the true and often unseen causal variables.
We can now turn from the errors in causal
explanation to avoid and move to other issues

involving hypotheses. Table 2 provides a review of

the major errors, and Figure 5 illustrates them.

From the Research Question

to Hypotheses

It is difficult to move from a broad topic to hypothe-

ses, but the leap from a well-formulated research

question to hypotheses is a short one. A good

research question has hypotheses embedded within

it. In addition, hypotheses are tentative answers to

research questions.

Consider this example of a research ques-

tion: “Is age at marriage associated with divorce?”

The question has two variables: “age at marriage”

and “divorce.” To develop a hypothesis, we must

determine which is the independent variable. The

independent variable is age at marriage because

marriage must logically precede divorce. We may

also ask what the direction of the relationship is.

The hypothesis could be the following: “The lower

the age at time of marriage, the higher the chances

that the marriage will end in divorce.” This hypoth-

esis answers the research question and makes a

TABLE 2 Summary of Errors in Explanation

TYPE OF ERROR SHORT DEFINITION EXAMPLE

Tautology The relationship is true by definition
and involves circular reasoning.

Poverty is caused by having very little

money.

Teleology The cause is an intention that is
inappropriate, or it has misplaced
temporal order.

People get married in religious

ceremonies because society

wants them to.

Ecological fallacy The empirical observations are at too
high a level for the causal relationship
that is stated.

New York has a high crime rate. Joan

lives in New York. Therefore, she

probably stole my watch.

Reductionism The empirical observations are at too
low a level for the causal relationship
that is stated.

Because Steven lost his job and did not

buy a new car, the country entered a

long economic recession.

Spuriousness An unseen third variable is the actual
cause of both the independent and
dependent variable.

Hair length is associated with TV programs.

People with short hair prefer watching

football; people with long hair prefer

romance stories. (Unseen:Gender)