Structured Causal Beliefs and Their Defence in Accounts of Student Political Action

Abstract

It is argued that an explanation can be thought of as a structure of causal beliefs, each of which can be defended by the explainer. A method for get ting respondents to show how they organise and defend their causal explanations is described. Using the method, a study of explanations of a vivid event in local campus politics is reported. Differences in the explanations of groups of respon dents were only discovered when a full structural measure was used. It is argued that the method reported here is a more sensitive treatment than traditional single-shot attribution measures, especially for events explained in a thoughtful and systematic manner.