Date: 2024
Type: Contribution to book
Empirical methods
Mathias SIEMS and Po Jen YAP (eds), The Cambridge handbook of comparative law, Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2024, Cambridge law handbooks, pp. 157-176
SIEMS, Mathias, Empirical methods, in Mathias SIEMS and Po Jen YAP (eds), The Cambridge handbook of comparative law, Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2024, Cambridge law handbooks, pp. 157-176
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77205
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
Terms such ‘empirical legal studies’, ‘empirical legal research’ and ‘empirical methods in law’ can be understood in a wide or narrow sense. In a wide sense, such research includes both qualitative and quantitative methods and thus it overlaps to a large extent with research on ‘law and society’, ‘socio-legal studies’ and ‘legal sociology’. By contrast, a narrow definition focusses on research which applies quantitative methods to questions about the relationship between law and society, in particular with the aim of drawing conclusions about causal connections between variables. This chapter follows such a narrow definition for pragmatic reasons, given that other chapters of Part I of this Handbook also address some topics of empirical legal studies in a wider sense (notably the chapters on ‘Qualitative Fieldwork’, ‘Linguistic Approaches’, ‘New Institutional Economics’ and ‘Machine-Learning Methods’). Thus, this chapter mainly discusses research that employs methods of inferential statistics, such as regression analysis. In its most basic form, a formal regression model consists of ‘dependent’ and ‘independent’ (or ‘explanatory’) variables – the former being the variable the analysis tries to explain and the latter being the possible causal factors.
Additional information:
Published online: January 2024
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/77205
Full-text via DOI: 10.1017/9781108914741.003
ISBN: 9781108914741; 9781108843089
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Files associated with this item
Files | Size | Format | View |
---|---|---|---|
There are no files associated with this item. |