Skip to content
Publicly Available Published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg May 18, 2016

A Methodological Outlook on Causal Identification and Empirical Methods for the Analysis of Social Mechanism

  • Dominik Becker
From the journal Analyse & Kritik

Abstract

The debate on empirical tests of social mechanisms suffers from a fragmented view on the relative benefit of the empirical method a researcher considers to be superior, compared to the flaws of all other methods. In this outlook. I argue that disciplinary barriers might be surmounted by a common methodological perspective on the analysis of social mechanisms. First, experimental, quantitative, qualitative, and simulation methods (agent-based modeling) are all required, but also capable to deal with the issue of causal identification, respectively. Second, having established causal identification (among which I subsume strategies to deal with causal heterogeneity). each method disposes of genuine techniques to deal with the most crucial property of mechanism-based explanations: input-mechanism-output (IMO) relations.

Published Online: 2016-05-18
Published in Print: 2016-05-01

© 2016 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 19.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/auk-2016-0113/html
Scroll to top button