{"id":517,"date":"2012-09-28T13:09:31","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T13:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=517"},"modified":"2012-09-28T13:09:31","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T13:09:31","slug":"in-defense-of-description","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":"In defense of description"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Gerring has a new article<\/a> in the British Journal of Political Science [ungated here<\/a>]which\u00a0attempts to restore\u00a0description<\/strong>\u00a0to its rightful place as a respectful occupation for political scientists. Description has indeed been relegated to the sidelines at the expense of causal\u00a0inference\u00a0during the last 50 years,\u00a0and Gerring does a great job in explaining why this is wrong. But he\u00a0also points out why description is inherently more difficult than\u00a0causal analysis:\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Descriptive inference, by contrast, is centred on a judgment about what is important, substantively speaking, and how to describe it. To describe something is to assert its ultimate value<\/strong>. Not surprisingly, judgments about matters of\u00a0substantive rationality are usually more contested than judgments about matters of instrumental rationality, and this offers an important clue to the predicament of descriptive inference.’ (p.740)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Required reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Gerring has a new article in the British Journal of Political Science [ungated here]which\u00a0attempts to restore\u00a0description\u00a0to its rightful place as a respectful occupation for political scientists. Description has indeed been relegated to the sidelines at the expense of causal\u00a0inference\u00a0during the last 50 years,\u00a0and Gerring does a great job in explaining why this is wrong. But he\u00a0also points out why description is inherently more difficult than\u00a0causal analysis:\u00a0 ‘Descriptive inference, by contrast, is centred on a judgment about what is important, substantively speaking, and how to describe it. To describe something is to assert its ultimate value. Not surprisingly, judgments about matters of\u00a0substantive rationality are usually more contested than judgments about matters of instrumental rationality, and this offers an important clue to the predicament of descriptive inference.’ (p.740) Required reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[9,10,26],"tags":[177,178,359,497,589,635],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-8l","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":884,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=884","url_meta":{"origin":517,"position":0},"title":"Is interpretation descriptive or explanatory?","date":"February 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"One defining feature of interpretivist approaches to social science is the idea that the goal of analysis\u00a0is to provide interpretations\u00a0of social reality rather than law-based explanations. 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For example: \"we provide an overview here of what is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":193,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=193","url_meta":{"origin":517,"position":4},"title":"Social science in the courtroom","date":"December 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone who is interested in\u00a0the sociology of science, causal inferences from observational data,\u00a0employment gender discrimination, judicial sagas, or academic spats should read the latest issue of Sociological Methods & Research. The whole issue is devoted to the Wal-Mart Stores,Inc. v. 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The two goals are supposed to be strongly related - by discovering (the) significant effects of exogenous (independent) variables, one\u00a0accounts for\u00a0the outcome of interest.\u00a0In fact, the working assumption of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}