In Search of Valid Inference: methods and hypothesis tests in brazilian legislative studies

Abstract:

A contemporary political science had a turning point in the construction of the knowledge on the political and social realities with the publication of the work Project of Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research of the King, Keohane and Verba (1994). The authors undertake a greater systematization of research designs in the various areas of social sciences. And they point to the construction of valid inferences as the main objective of scientific research. As discussions around Designing Social Inquiry and the focus on constructing valid inferences guiding the creation of a broad methodological map at the disposal of political scientists. This is the case of multiple faculties of reaction testing (2016) which coined the term Inferential Pluralism “in which multiple causation logics coexist for the production of valid inferences” (REZENDE, 2016). The objective of this study was to investigate the techniques and hypothesis tests mobilized by the researchers of our legislative institutions, the present work using the Analytical Steering Framework (MEA) (Rezende, 2015) for the consubstantial diagnosis. The findings indicate that there is room for methodological enhancement in the field of non-Brazilian legislative studies, especially not referring to: the integration between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, as a strategy for identification and more in-depth discussions on the selection bias.

>Keywords:
Legislative studies; Inferential pluralism methods; Hypothesis testing