Conditions for Causality
Concomitant Variation, Time Order of Occurence, Absence of Other Possible Causal Factors
What is Concomitant Variation
When one thing changes, the other thing consistently changes too
What is Time Order of Occurence
The cause always has to happen before or at the exactly same moment as the effect
What is Absence of Other Possible Causal Factors
You have to be sure that the only reason the effect happened is because of your cause and not smth else that might be secretly influencing it
Concomitant Variation Key concepts
Independent variables, dependent variables, Test units, Extraneous Variables
What is dependent variables
What we measure, it’s what we are looking at to see if it changed because of what we did
What is independent variables
What we change, it’s the thing we change on purpose to see what effect it has
What is Test units
Who or what we are testing, people groups or places we are watching to see how they react
What is Extraneous Variables
Other things that might mess up our results, smth we didn’t plan, but that still can affect the outcome (weather, new competitors, etc)
Internal Validity
This all about being sure that the changes we made (independent variables) are actually what caused the results we saw (dependent variables) and not some random stuff
External Validity
It means how well the results of one experiment can be used for other people, other places, or another time.
“this would probably work the same way for other people, in other places or even different times
