ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part examines the role of significance tests in scientific inference by linking the statistical issues of sampling, population, meaning, and level directly to the philosophy of science issues of scope, form, process, and purpose. It describes the possibility of using significance tests to make inferences from a complete enumeration of cases to an infinite hypothetical population, under the assumption that set of cases can be considered a random sample of all possible samples that could have been generated under similar conditions. The part explores the view that such a rationale might have some potential for increasing the population scope of sociological generalization. It shows considerable ambivalence about these notions; many sociologists striving for rigor, quantification, and generality in their research paid no heed to her cautious tone and readily expanded her ideas to apply in practice to any set of cases.
