Reference no: EM132290530

Causal Analysis Worksheet : Tactics to Link a Cause and Effect

Example: Causes of the pay gap between men and women

Mill's methods

Common factor: If researchers identified a set of companies which do not have a pay gap between men and women, they could look into those companies' hiring and salary practices to find a common factor which might explain their success in eliminating the pay gap.

Single difference: Two women have the same educational background and experience, and they have the same job title, but one earns more than the other. If the one who earns more has a female boss and the one who earns less has a male boss, this example could be used in a single difference method argument that the bias of male bosses may be causing the pay gap.

Varying together: If researchers find that the pay gap is decreasing over a ten year period and also find that the number of children each woman has is also decreasing, they could argue that women's involvement in childrearing is a cause of the gap. They would need to establish agency.

Eliminating possibilities: An argument could look at a particular example of a woman who earns less than a particular male counterpart and try to determine the reason by eliminating possible causes.

If experience, assertiveness, family responsibilities, educational background, concrete achievement in the workplace, and other non-gender related causes can be eliminated that will help support the argument that unconscious gender bias may be involved.

Other methods:

Chain of causes: A writer might develop an argument starting with the desire of parents for their daughters to fit in and win social approval, which leads to the parents teaching the girls to listen and please rather than putting themselves in the spotlight or in leadership roles. This in turn leads girls to practice social habits which become ingrained and affect their later performance in the workplace.

Time precedence: If researchers gave a number of women a training in assertiveness and then found that the same women earned more in their next jobs after receiving the training, that could support an argument that such trainings could help decrease the pay gap.

Examples: Some of the above methods involve examples.

Analogy: A successful program to reduce a race-related pay gap through diversity trainings could be used as an analogy to argue for gender-related trainings to reduce the gender pay gap.

Worksheet

1. What is one cause and one effect which you will need to link in your research paper where the link is not immediately obvious? You could choose a cause of a problem or an effect of a solution, but choose something you will need to convince the readers of.

2. Now, read over the questions on page 214 of Rhetoric and choose at least three of the above methods which you think might be most useful to your argument in your research paper. Explain how you would use the tactic in relation to your topic.

3. What is the agency in your causal argument? Will you need to argue for it, or will it seem obvious to your audience?