Causality

Flashcards covering the criteria for nomothetic causality, intervening versus spurious variables, the Broken Windows thesis, statistical significance benchmarks, and hypothesis testing errors.

What are the three criteria for establishing nomothetic causality?

Correlation (attributes of one variable are associated with attributes of another variable - they covary), Time order (independent variable precedes dependent variable), and Cannot be Spurious (covariation cannot be driven by some third variable).

How do spurious variables differ from intervening variables?

Spurious variables have a separate effect on both the independent and dependent variable, whereas intervening variables come between the independent and dependent variable in time (such as mediating and moderating variables).

Who published 'Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety' in 1982, and what was its central claim?

Wilson and Kelling published it; the claim was that signs of disorder (small crimes) lead to further disorder (serious crimes).

What are the standard benchmarks for statistical significance in sociology?

$*p \le .05$ (result would happen $5$ times out $100$), $**p \le .01$ (result would happen $1$ time out $100$), and $***p \le .001$ (result would happen $1$ time out $1000$).

What is the difference between a Type I Error and a Type II Error?

A Type I Error is falsely rejecting the Null hypothesis (claiming a relationship when reality has no relationship), whereas a Type II Error is falsely accepting the Null hypothesis (claiming no relationship when reality has a relationship).