Put the arguments into standard form for inductive generalizations (sampling arg

Question

Put the arguments into standard form for inductive generalizations (sampling arguments) and evaluate the strength.

An investigator studied several thousand heroin users and learned that 70 percent of them had used marijuana before they tried heroin. He concludes that roughly 70 percent of all marijuana users will go on to try heroin.

At the University of Pennsylvania, psychiatrists conducted a study to determine the social factors that affect the well-being of coronary patients. There were ninety-three patients in the study; slightly more than 50 percent of them had pets of some kind (dogs, cats, fish, and one iguana). At the end of a year, one-third of the patients who did not own pets had died, but only three animal owners had succumbed. The psychiatrists concluded that pet ownership may have a positive effect on the health of humans

Explanation / Answer

In the given case of research on heroine, the following inductive reasoning may be applied:

Of the several thousand participants with heroine addiction studied, 70 percent of them used marijuana before they tried heroin. Therefore, the study found that 70 percent of the heroine users in the population are likely to use marijuana.

Inductive generalisations may involve hypothetico-deductive approach which assumes that a generalization is non-derivable in case it is falsified. A researcher may then arrive at the insight based on a minimal or finite set of generalizations one of which is bound to be falsified by the data. thus, the given inductive argument of the researchers makes a highly strong claim abou the generalisability of the findings to the population.

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