Quote:
Originally Posted by TechTransfer
Please don't think I'm upset you're poking holes- I appreciate it, because it's what the people who read my article are going to do as well. Every theory needs a devil's advocate.
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This isn't a devil's advocate kind of discussion. It is an academic one.
You have to always control for various factors before you assume causation (especially as distinct from correlation). For instance, if you were submitting your article to a refereed journal, the reviewers will ask "how do you know this" and "what have you controlled for?" If you do not control for anything else, they will tell you that your quantitative methods are elementary school-level and similar to doing crosstabs.
You aren't the first person to do this type of research. I suggest searching your university's library webpage and so forth. If this is more than an undergrad course paper, there is other data that's accessible even if it's not through your university.