What are two difficulties with identifying idiographic causal explanations?
What will be an ideal response?
Time Order and Causal Mechanisms. An idiographic explanation like Anderson’s pays close attention to time order and causal mechanisms. Nonetheless, it is difficult to make a convincing case that one particular causal narrative should be chosen over an alternative narrative (Abbott 1992). Does low self-esteem result in vulnerability to the appeals of drug dealers, or does a chance drug encounter precipitate a slide in self-esteem? The prudent causal analyst remains open to alternative explanations.
Idiographic explanation is deterministic, focusing on what caused a particular event to occur or what caused a particular case to change. As in nomothetic explanations, idiographic causal explanations can involve counterfactuals, by trying to identify what would have happened if a different circumstance had occurred. But unlike nomothetic explanations, in idiographic explanations, the notion of a probabilistic relationship, an average effect, does not really apply. A deterministic cause has an effect only in the case under consideration.
You might also like to view...
Several states now allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a birth control prescription, because they object on moral grounds
a. True b. False Indicate whether the statement is true or false
Jailing is the socialization process through which a new inmate learns the accepted norms and values of the prison population
a. True b. False Indicate whether the statement is true or false
Many cases sent to juvenile court intake are handled by informal probation
a. True b. False
Which community policing and problem-solving researcher argues that problem solving suffers from appearing to be simple and that police officers do not have the analytical skills required to analyze problems?
a. John Eck b. William Spelman c. Rana Sampson d. Herman Goldstein