Foundations of Political Research
POL 10170 Foundations of Political Research
Monday 9.00-10.00 and Wednesday 9.00-10.00.
All information about the course can be found in the syllabus.
The core textbook is Babbie's The Practice of Social Research. His The Basics of Social Research can also be used.
For the data project, you will need the following resources:
Overview of variables in the data set
Original data and codebook (Look up any variables you use in your assignment in the questionnaire!)
For the graphs you can select your variables here: Find My Plot.
Template for the essay
| 26 Sep | What is political science research? | slides | |
| 28 Sep | Using library resources (Vanessa Buckley) | (slides on Brightspace) | |
| 3 Oct | Counting or interpreting? | slides | |
| 5 Oct | Know what you’re talking about | slides | |
| 10 Oct | Reading and writing political science research | slides | |
| 12 Oct | Example: International institutions and its discontents (Yoo Sun Jung) | ||
| 17 Oct | Looking at a variable: Graphs for single variables | slides | video on levels of measurement video on misleading axes |
| 19 Oct | Looking at relations: Graphs for two variables | slides | |
| 24 Oct | Example: Who voted yes in the marriage referendum? | slides | article |
| 26 Oct | Testing relations: Graphs for three or more variables | slides | video on proportional ink video on common causes and control variables |
| 7 Nov | Coding text | slides | |
| 9 Nov | Example: Political resistance (Stephanie Dornschneider-Elkink) | ||
| 14 Nov | Theories and hypotheses | slides | |
| 16 Nov | Experimental designs | slides | |
| 21 Nov | Historical and comparative research | slides | |
| 23 Nov | Survey design: Who and what to ask? | slides | |
| 28 Nov | The ethics of doing research | slides | |
| 30 Nov | Review session | quiz |