Abstract
The use of models in social science is now widely acknowledged, and well beyond cosmetic or illustrative purposes. However, the details and the mechanics of their use still prove hard to pin down. Equally, the usefulness of social scientific models in social practice and intervention is often challenged by a number of contentious and recurrent issues. One of these issues is ontological: How do model descriptions and aspects of social reality relate to each other? Often the descriptions offered by models are thin and unrealistic. Can we (and how much) learn about what goes on in the real-social world by analyzing the way/s that world gets described or explained by a model? A second issue is methodological: why using models when we can design experiments in the social world that are able, with some rigor, to inform us on what works? Nowadays there is an established trend to prefer the results achieved, for example, by well-conducted randomized control trials, by many considered the golden rule to doing good and useful social science.
In this chapter, we will first show some of the limitations and costs of using models in representing real-life situations, and suggest some strategies by which we can still formulate informative inferences from model to target system. We will then point out some of the virtues and benefits of using models (particularly causal models) when what is at stake is not only answering the question what works in policy terms, but also why it works – or, even more interestingly, why it does not work in given circumstances.
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Abbreviations
- QALY:
-
quality adjusted life year
- RCT:
-
randomized controlled trial
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Acknowledgements
Nancy Cartwright, Eileen Munro, and Jeremy Hardie have provided most of the examples and case studies presented in this chapter, and which have been part of discussion in the research project Evidence for Use (Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science). The quality of life example is discussed in E. Montuschi, Oggettivita’ ed Evidenza Scientifica(Carocci, Roma 2001), Chapter 5. I am grateful to Federica Russo for reading and advising on the pre-final draft of this chapter.
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Montuschi, E. (2017). Application of Models from Social Science to Social Policy. In: Magnani, L., Bertolotti, T. (eds) Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30526-4_52
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