El viernes 24 de abril, Stanley Presser, profesor de la Universidad de Maryland, impartirá un seminario -en inglés- en el IESA a las 12:30 en el salón de actos
Presser ha titulado su ponencia Data Collection versus Data Construction: How Methodological Factors Shape the Conclusions Drawn from Sample Surveys y nos ha dejado el siguiente resumen.
Although social scientists routinely talk about “data collection,” data are not collected, they are constructed. As a result, data have no meaning independent of the methods used to construct them. I develop this argument and provide two examples showing its usefulness for the interpretation of well-known puzzles. The first example — from Putnam’s Bowling Alone – concerns the increase over time in survey estimates of volunteering in the United States, which is counter to the declines shown by other measures of social capital. The second example — from the sociology of religion — concerns the surprising stability of survey measures of church attendance in the United States during a time when secularization has gained force.