Arguments and Variables

 Let’s the the basics of the building blocks of an argument - varaibles.

We always talk about this when reading, analyzing, or doing research, but what are they?

One way to see them are as subjects and predicates of a sentence.

If you’ve undertook logic classs before, it’s also similar.

I.e. Something is ______.

The most basic format of a statement. Mind you not all statements are argumentative statements.

Basically, there’s at least three in political science.

1. Sample - you argue, women should not expect men to treat them like delicate flowers (Wollstonecrafts argument). This is a normative argument, it’s not testable, but it’s arguable. Your purpose here is to give support for you argument on why a certain gender (women) should act based on a particular norm (being treated delicately).
2. Sample - you argue, more women in government reduces corruption. This is a positive statement, it’s arguable, and can be tested (you can check a number of governments and see if they do). What you are doing here is try tp prove that governments with more elected women officials really do reduce corruption. Notice a difference, normative arguments say how things should be, while positive arguments try to describe the world.
3. Sample - you argue, Philippine civil society is on a decline. This is an evaluative or assessment argument. You’re making judgement on something based on a particular set criteria.

Variables are the components of the argument that have “variations.”

Let’s see,

1. In the first sample, if we simply look at the specificity of the argument, there might not seem any variation. But when we look at the classes over which the two parts belong, women is a variation of gender. Expectation of treatment is another and is a variation of s norm. You can also frame your variable in terms of what kind of women should abide by this proposed argument? Strong women? Though that can cause a different for of debate. But rermember, the quality is arguable, then expect a debate on the topic.
2. The second example is where Independent and Dependent Variables are usually used. The idea of dependence and independence ais a relationship etween them. The Independent variable usually has an impact on the dependent. Hence, in the example, Corruption is a variable, it’s the dependent. It’s affected by the kind of gender that officials have (or even the number of a kind of gender, multiple variations). Gender here is the independent variable. So what’s the variations for corruption? In the case of this argument, it’s degree, so we’re talking about a potential quantitative study. The same for woemen, the variation ca be the high or low number of women officials.
3. In the third sample, there was only one variable, and we’retrying to see the variation in terms of the Philippine’s civil society. Sometimes you can just do it this way, but may seem incomplete. You can instead evaluate the civil society’s effectiveness in advocating for human rights. So here you already know what category it’s being evaluated.  You can check variations of civic activity (i.e. Rallies, social media engagement, membership), it’s your independent variable. How did we know t’s independent though? Check out the operational connector between them - “effectiveness” so who (IV) afects who (DV). Another variation that you ca research here is the degree of effectiveness.

These are the basic building blocks of an argument. So check it out for yourself, think of current issues, identify variables and their potential units of variation. Are the units numeric? Then your research will be quantitative. Are the units words and ideas? Then your research will be qualitative.

It’s part of the science, you don’t choose the method because you like or don’t like math. You choose it because it matches your argument. Then you recruit a statistician or a data analyst if you have a particular weakness on the method.

This links us back to niche. As I mentioned last time, your niche is your expertise or even your passion or concern. And this can be either your dependent or independent variables.  I.e. Gender, corruption, environment, pollution, etc. Or your expertise can be on a particular method.

This coincides with flavor text for our Magic: The Gathering card for today, check it out below.

(Photo credit to Wizards of The Coast, Inc., https://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=175138&type=card)