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Deduction & Induction

This document discusses deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning moves from general theories to specific hypotheses and observations, working from top-down. Inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories, working bottom-up. Both approaches involve moving between theories and observations, with deductive reasoning testing hypotheses and inductive reasoning exploring patterns to form theories. Most research uses elements of both inductive and deductive reasoning.

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Farah Nova
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89 views1 page

Deduction & Induction

This document discusses deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning moves from general theories to specific hypotheses and observations, working from top-down. Inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories, working bottom-up. Both approaches involve moving between theories and observations, with deductive reasoning testing hypotheses and inductive reasoning exploring patterns to form theories. Most research uses elements of both inductive and deductive reasoning.

Uploaded by

Farah Nova
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Deductive and Inductive Thinking

In logic, we often refer to the two broad methods of reasoning as the deductive and inductive
approaches.
Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally
called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest.
We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow down even
further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to
test the hypotheses with specific
data -- a confirmation (or not) of
our original theories.
Inductive reasoning works the
other way, moving from specific
observations to broader
generalizations and theories.
Informally, we sometimes call this
a "bottom up" approach (please
note that it's "bottom up" and not
"bottoms up" which is the kind of thing the bartender says to customers when he's trying to close for
the night!). In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect
patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up
developing some general
conclusions or theories.
These two methods of reasoning
have a very different "feel" to
them when you're conducting
research. Inductive reasoning, by
its very nature, is more openended and exploratory, especially
at the beginning. Deductive
reasoning is more narrow in
nature and is concerned with
testing or confirming hypotheses.
Even though a particular study may look like it's purely deductive (e.g., an experiment designed to
test the hypothesized effects of some treatment on some outcome), most social research involves
both inductive and deductive reasoning processes at some time in the project. In fact, it doesn't take a
rocket scientist to see that we could assemble the two graphs above into a single circular one that
continually cycles from theories down to observations and back up again to theories. Even in the
most constrained experiment, the researchers may observe patterns in the data that lead them to
develop new theories.

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