Opinion Polling and Election Predictions.
Election prediction by means of opinion polling is a rare empirical success story for social science. I examine the details of a prominent case, drawing two lessons of more general interest: (1) Methodology over metaphysics. Traditional metaphysical criteria were not a useful guide to whether succes...
| Publicado en: | Philosophy of Science Vol. 82; no. 5; pp. 1260 - 1272 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Cambridge University Press
Dec2015
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=111483425&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 111483425 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00318248 PSC jtl: Philosophy of Science issn: 00318248 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2015 vid: 82 iid: 5 pid: 15979 pub: Cambridge University Press artinfo: ui: 111483425 10.1086/683651 ppf: 1260 ppct: 12 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 302KB tig: atl: Opinion Polling and Election Predictions. aug: au: Northcott, Robert su: Public opinion polls Election forecasting Social theory Metaphysics Causation (Philosophy) Mechanism (Philosophy) sug: subj: Public opinion polls Election forecasting Social theory Metaphysics Causation (Philosophy) Mechanism (Philosophy) ab: Election prediction by means of opinion polling is a rare empirical success story for social science. I examine the details of a prominent case, drawing two lessons of more general interest: (1) Methodology over metaphysics. Traditional metaphysical criteria were not a useful guide to whether successful prediction would be possible; instead, the crucial thing was selecting an effective methodology. (2) Which methodology? Success required sophisticated use of case-specific evidence from opinion polling. The pursuit of explanations via general theory or causal mechanisms, by contrast, turned out to be precisely the wrong path—contrary to much recent philosophy of social science. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Philosophy of Science is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Philosophy of Science holder: Cambridge University Press dt: @attributes: year: 2015 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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