A cause is an explanation for some characteristic, attitude, or behavior of groups, individuals, or other entities (such as families, organizations, or cities) or for events. Most social scientists seek causal explanations that reflect tests of the types of hypotheses with which you are familiar.

The independent variable is the presumed cause, and the dependent variable is the potential effect. For example, the study by Sampson and Raudenbush ...

A cause is an explanation for some characteristic, attitude, or behavior of groups, individuals, or other entities (such as families, organizations, or cities) or for events. Most social scientists seek causal explanations that reflect tests of the types of hypotheses with which you are familiar.

The independent variable is the presumed cause, and the dependent variable is the potential effect. For example, the study by Sampson and Raudenbush (2001) tested whether disorder in urban neighborhoods (the independent variable) leads to crime (the dependent variable).

This type of causal explanation is termed nomothetic. A different type of cause is the focus of some qualitative research and our everyday conversations about causes. In this type of causal explanation, termed idiographic, individual events or the behaviors of individuals are explained with a series of related, prior events. For example, you might explain a particular crime as resulting from several incidents in the life of the perpetrator that resulted in a tendency toward violence, coupled with stress resulting from a failed marriage, and a chance meeting.

A nomothetic causal explanation is one involving the belief that variation in an independent variable will be followed by variation in the dependent variable, when all other things are equal (ceteris paribus). In this perspective, researchers who claim a causal effect have concluded that the value of cases on the dependent variable differs from what their value would have been in the absence of variation in the independent variable. For instance, researchers
might claim that the likelihood of committing violent crimes is higher for individuals who were abused as children than it would be if these same individuals had not been abused as children. Or, researchers might claim that the likelihood of committing violent crimes is higher for individuals exposed to media violence than it would be if these same individuals

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