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The Theoretical And Conceptual Framework Of Putnam 's Experiment Essay

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Paxton’s (2002) research primarily follows the theoretical and conceptual framework of Putnam’s experiment. Although Putnam’s study created a collaboration between qualitative and quantitative methodologies, there remains insignificant quantitative data for this particular subject matter. To this end, Paxton has attempted to use additional data resources to extend on Putnam’s study. The methods and data utilized, however, are worrisome in relation to how it fits within the conceptual framework. First, Paxton uses data from the World Values Survey (WVS) (1980 and 1990) to measure two dimensions of social capital: associational networks and trust (2002, 260). Her dataset has individual-level information on trust and voluntary association memberships in 48 countries (2002, 260). However, Paxton does not state how these 48 countries ‘fit’ into the study. Are the data simply being used because they are available, or do these countries encompass the definition of a liberal democracy being utilized? If the latter, what are Paxton’s arguments for including countries that are democratic in name, but are masked with international contention such as Russia? Paxton also notes that several countries have no survey data on associational memberships which creates a cross-national sample of small proportion (2002, 260). Overall, one could argue the first data source does not seem be rather representative of the concepts being studied nor representative of the areas the data were pulled

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