ABSTRACT
QAD is taken to cover any analysis of extensive social data—though typically data collected via survey research—that involves the statistical investigation of relationships existing among variables. Rational action theory refers to any theoretical approach that seeks to explain social phenomena as the outcome of individual action that is construed as rational, given individuals' goals and conditions of action, and is in the way made intelligible. At a technical level, the criticisms advanced by Freedman and others of causal path modeling in sociology focus on the dubious validity of the stochastic assumptions that need to be made about the distributions, individual and joint, of the variables involved. In turn, much of the debate that has ensued has been concerned with just how far such assumptions are in fact breached, how much the matters, and how far any shortcomings that do occur can be made good by various technical "fixes".
