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Methods: Survey Experiments and Resilience
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Some meaty methodological advice on experimentation in surveys is found in the Winter 2007 issue of Political Analysis (the journal of the Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association). In “The Logic of the Survey Experiment Reexamined,” authors Gaines, Kuklinski and Quirk (2006, pages 1-20) offer an overview of the power of survey experiments to identify causal relationships, along with a bundle of caveats scholars should keep in mind when designing, conducting and interpreting survey experiments. (The article is available to the Calvin community through the publisher’s web site).
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Quote: Control, in Moderation, Yields Adaptability
“We do not yet know what makes some systems more adaptable than others, but research on complexity has yielded some clues. Some of my own work on physical systems called spin glasses suggests that the level of central control over subsidiary parts of a system is an important consideration. Too much control freezes the system into limited configurations; too little causes it to wander aimlessly. Only systems that hover on the border between order and chaos exhibit the needed general stability and capacity to explore the universe of possible solutions to challenges.”
--Stuart A. Kauffman, Scientific American November 2006, p. 44
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