ACE 6 Use knowledge, theories and research perspectives, such as statistical methods or observational accounts, appropriate to the social sciences to understand and evaluate social systems and human behaviors.
| Description | Exemplary 4 |
Acceptable 3 |
Developing 2 |
Deficient 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use Knowledge Appropriate to the Social Sciences | Demonstrates social sciences knowledge from texts and from primary literature, and uses this knowledge to understand, make predictions about, or make judgments about the value or conditions of social systems and human behaviors. | Demonstrates sufficient social science knowledge and can use this knowledge to explain or make predictions about social systems and human behaviors. | Demonstrates familiarity with social science knowledge, but with gaps that limit ability to use this to understand social systems and human behaviors. | Lacks the social science knowledge (facts, information and skills) to understand social systems and human behaviors. |
| Use Theories to Understand and Evaluate | Uses social science theories and concepts in combination with an understanding of existing knowledge to identify highly relevant research questions that, if investigated, could confirm or disconfirm key aspects of the theories about social systems and human behaviors. | Uses social science theories and concepts to pose research questions about social systems and human behaviors that can be investigated using scientific methods. | Is familiar with some important social science theories and concepts but cannot use these to frame research questions. | Is not sufficiently familiar with social science theories and concepts and cannot use these to frame research questions about social systems and human behaviors. |
| Uses Social Science Research Methods | Can translate a social science research question into a clear and relevant hypothesis that predicts relations among social or behavioral variables and clearly describes alternative hypotheses. | Translates a social science research question into an empirical hypothesis that is logically related to existing knowledge but does not identify specific social or behavioral variables and does not predict relations among them. | Translates a social science research question into a hypothesis that is related to the topic under study, but the hypothesis is not empirical (cannot be tested with a welldesigned study) and is not logically related to existing knowledge. | Hypothesis does not logically address the stated question. Either no hypothesis is stated or the hypothesis is not related to the topic under study. |
| Uses Social Science Research Analyses | Interprets data using appropriate quantitative or qualitative analytic strategies, uses these results to make interpretations appropriate to the question. | Uses simple quantitative analysis of data (means, standard deviations) or qualitative analysis of data (thematic analysis) in support of conclusions. | Describes social sciences data and sometimes forms data into tables or figures in support of conclusions but without using quantitative statistics or qualitative analytic techniques to support conclusions. | Does not interpret social science data that is provided in a table or figure. |