In addition to hundreds of new references features new to this edition include: a comprehensive introduction to qualitative methods including a review of existing computer applications for collecting and analyzing data; the latest information about the use of computers and online research techniques, including the use of the Internet to locate actual research instruments and journal articles; updated coverage on new scales, internal and external validity, and new analytic techniques with extensive references on each; abstracts, citations and subject groupings by measurement tool of the last five years of the American Sociological Review, Social Psychology Quarterly, and the American Journal of Sociology; extensive coverage of how to prepare manuscripts for publication, including a list of all journals covered by Sociological Abstracts along with the editorial office address and URL for each entry; new coverage of ethical issues; expansion of social indicators to include international coverage; discussion of the importance of policy research with presentation and discussion of specific models as an adjunct to both applied and basic research techniques; and the addition of an index to facilitate the reader's ability to quickly locate a topic.

Criteria for Judging the Usefulness of a Hypothesis

Criteria for Judging the Usefulness of a Hypothesis

Unless a hypothesis can be tested, it is useless. In the following section, William J. Goode and Paul K. Hatt present a step-by-step method for evaluating hypotheses against a set of criteria. Note that there is an emphasis that a hypothesis should be related to a body of theory.

To be complete in our thinking however, we also have to attend to the verification of the results of the test of the hypothesis. Zetterberg has stated three criteria for the acceptance of a working hypothesis, that

  • the empirical data were found to be arranged in ...
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