Meta-analysis is a statistical method that combines quantitative findings from previous studies. It has been increasingly used to obtain more credible results in a wide range of scientific fields. Combining the results of relevant studies allows researchers to leverage study similarities while modeling potential sources of between-study…

Does "X" affect "Y"? Answering this question is particularly difficult if reverse causality is looming. Many social scientists turn to panel data to address such questions of causal ordering. Yet even in longitudinal analyses, reverse causality threatens causal inference based on conventional panel models. Whereas the…

Instrumental variable estimators hold the promise of enabling researchers to estimate the effects of educational treatments that are not (or cannot be) randomly assigned but that may be affected by randomly assigned interventions. Examples of the use of instrumental variables in such cases are increasingly common in educational and social science…

A restudy of nonrespondents to a contingent valuation method survey increased the response rate from 59 to 87 percent. The likelihood ratio test was used to determine respondent/nonrespondent differences more precisely. Results indicate that nonresponse bias can be quantified and that personal contacts with nonrespondents can generate crucial…

Qualitative research evokes rather stereotyped responses from the mainstream of social science. The following 10 standardized responses to the stimulus "qualitative research interview" (QRI) are discussed: (1) it is not scientific, only common sense; (2) it is not objective, but subjective; (3) it is not trustworthy, but biased; (4) it is not…

Feminist research techniques in sociology, history, and anthropology reveal consistent approaches on how to study women. In all three disciplines, feminist methodology reveals a pervasive lack of information about women's worlds, a bias in the underrepresentation of women researchers, a need to reconceptualize previously investigated phenomena to…

Discusses the difficulties of defining races and establishing statistical differences between such groups. Points out that studies of such aspects as temperament or basic personality traits show much more variation within groups than between groups. Investigators of such questions should be especially careful to use sound methodology and cautious…

Quality assurance and evaluation research, like other fields of social research and its application, are confronted with a series of problems. In the present paper, I want first to give a list of such problems, although necessarily incomplete. It is then claimed that while there is no "perfect" solution to these problems, critical multiplism may…

This document is part of a series of chapters described in SO 011 759. This chapter reports the results of Monte Carlo simulations designed to analyze problems of using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE: see SO 011 767) in research models which combine longitudinal and dynamic behavior data in studies of change. Four complications--censoring of…

This document is part of a series of chapters described in SO 011 759. This chapter offers guidelines for studying change in dynamically interdependent variables, even when a model that ignores interdependence is estimated. Many sociological studies concern dynamically interdependent variables; for example, in a study of female employment, a…

The document, part of a series of chapters described in SO 011 759, considers the problem of censoring in the analysis of event-histories (data on dated events, including dates of change from one qualitative state to another). Censoring refers to the lack of information on events that occur before or after the period for which data are available.…

Asserts that traditional approaches to multivariate analysis, including standard linear regression techniques, ignore the special character of count data. Explicates three suitable alternatives to standard regression techniques, a simple Poisson regression, a modified Poisson regression, and a negative binomial model. (MJP)