706: Political Science Research Methods
University of Kansas
Fall 2000

Course Description: This is the foundation course for students in the M.A. and Ph.D. programs in political science at the University of Kansas. The course serves three purposes:

1) It is an introduction to many of the formal research methods commonly found in social science research and policy evaluation in Europe and North America.

2) It is an introduction to basic statistical techniques, resources and concepts; these will be pursued in much greater depth in POLS 707.

3) It is an opportunity to develop skills in the presentation of research findings, including standards for written research reports.

In addition to these issues, the course will cover an assortment of aspects of graduate-level and professional political science. The course will not go into much detail on the substance of political science–these topics are covered in the 800-level survey courses–but examples of political behavior will be used extensively to illustrate various points.

Required Readings:

The readings for the course will be taken from the following three texts:

Alan Agresti and Barbara Finlay. 1997. Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences, 3rd ed.. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Janet Buttolph Johnson and Richard A. Joslyn. 1995. Political Science Research Methods. 3rd ed. Washington: CQ Press.

Stephen Van Evera. 1997. Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Recommended:

Gregory M. Scott and Stephen M. Garrison. 2000. The Political Science Student Writer's Manual.(3rd ed.) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (you will find this book useful if you are not familiar with the process of preparing and writing a research paper.)

These books are available at the bookstore in the Kansas Union. The textbooks will be supplemented by a few xeroxed articles that can be purchased from the department or read in the Allen Reading Room. Those articles are denoted by [XR].

Homework assignments, data sets, occasional overhead projector slides used during the lectures, and an assortment of links to other political science research site are available at the web site:

http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~schrodt/pols706

Method of Evaluation:

Your grade will be determined by the following:

1. Research paper: This is a major requirement of the course and will be developed in several stages throughout the semester. The paper should use either a statistical analysis or a systematic case study approach (as discussed in Eckstein and Van Evera). This work will be presented in both written form and orally, and will be discussed by the class. You will hand in both a completed initial version of the paper (Monday, 4 December) and a significantly revised version (Friday, 15 December). All of the intermediate steps in this assignment are required and failure to complete them on time will have a detrimental impact on your grade. [30% total]

2. An in-class midterm exam (80 minutes; Monday 23 October) [15%]

3. A take-home final exam covering concepts of social science research. This will be handed out on the last day of class (Monday 11 December) and due no later than Monday, 18 December. [25%]

4. A number of small assignments throughout the semester: most of these will involve your preparing short examples of research methods that will be discussed in class. Note that most of these assignments are due the day of class and will be used in class discussion: you will need to complete them in advance based on the readings. [10%]

5. Four statistics assignments. These will involve the use of computer programs such as spreadsheets and the Stata statistics package to analyze data provided by the instructor. You will be able to do these in the week following the class where the methods were presented. [20%]

Any student in this course who has a disability that is documented by the KU Services for Students with Disabilities office and may prevent him/her from fully demonstrating his/her abilities should contact me personally as soon as possible so that we can discuss accommodations necessary to ensure full participation and facilitate the educational opportunity.

The laboratory assistant for this course is Katie Lofton (office: Blake 314; email: lofton@ukans.edu). She will be working with you on various computer-related exercises, as well as consulting on the statistical assignments.

Schedule of Topics and Required Readings

Week 1: Introduction to the Course and the Discipline of Political Science
28 August

Readings: Johnson and Joslyn, chapters 1, 2.
Ph.D. students should also look at VanEvera chapters 4, 5–this is where the whole exercise that you are embarking upon is heading…

Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. chapter 1. [XR]

No class Monday, 4 September: Labor Day holiday.

Week 2: Research Design, Operationalization and Measurement
11 September

Readings: Johnson and Joslyn, chapters 3, 4, 14.
VanEvera, chapter 1.

Assignment (due at beginning of class): Prepare a written assignment consisting of the following:

1. A hypothesis (also indicate why the hypothesis is interesting)

2. Identify the independent and dependent variables;

3. Identify the unit of analysis; i.e. what are the cases you will be collecting data on

4. Operationalize each of the variables in two different ways (in other words, indicate two different ways that the same variable might be operationalized)

[The assigned readings discuss all of these concepts in detail: be sure to do the readings before you do this written assignment.]

Week 3: Sampling and Survey Research
18 September

Readings: Johnson and Joslyn, chapters 7, 10.
Agresti and Finlay, chapters 1, 2.

Assignments (due at beginning of class): Write at least four sample questions on some political issue; these will be critiqued in class.

 

Week 4: Descriptive Statistics and the Display of Quantitative Information
25 September

Readings: Agresti and Finlay, chapters 3, 4, 5 [note: we will not actually use the material in Chapter 5 until Week 7].

Assignment (due Week 6): Statistical exercise with Stata and Excel involving basic descriptive statistics and generating graphical displays.

 

Week 5: Introduction to the Use of Computers in Political Analysis
2 October

This week will involve instruction in various computer software we will be using, focusing on Stata, Excel and the use of the World Wide Web to locate and download data sets.

 

Week 6: Case Studies
9 October

Readings: VanEvera, chapter 2.

Harry Eckstein. 1975. "Case Study and Theory in Political Science." In Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby. Strategies of Inquiry: Handbook of Political Science vol. 7. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley [XR]

King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, chapter 6. [XR]

Timothy J. McKeown. 1999. "Case Studies and the Statistical Worldview: Review of King, Keohane and Verba. International Organization 53,1: 161-190. [XR]

 

Week 7: Significance Testing; Analysis of Bivariate Relationships
16 October

Readings: Johnson and Joslyn, chapter 12.
Agresti and Finlay, chapters 6, 7, 8.

Assignments (due at beginning of class): Initial description of research paper (one to two pages, including an initial bibliography and a discussion of the relevant political science theories)

Assignment (due Week 9): Statistical exercise involving measures of association and comparison of populations.

 

 

Week 8: MIDTERM EXAM and Elements of the Research Paper
23 October

Readings: Johnson and Joslyn, chapter 6.
VanEvera Appendix; skim 3 & 4.

Assignment: The midterm will be given during the first half of the class.

 

Related readings:

See the course web site for links to references on the APA and MLA style guides.

American Political Science Association. 1988. Style Manual for Political Science. Washington: APSA. [this is the style sheet used by the APSR, Sage, University of Michigan Press and many other political science publishers – it is short and I've got a copy you can look at. For reasons known only to itself, the APSR uses neither of the two standard style guides–APA and MLA–and instead has its own. Go figure...]

Cuba, Lee. 1997. A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science. New York: Longman.

The Economist. 1991. The Economist Style Guide. London: Economist Books. [particularly good on the use and mis-use of contemporary political terminology]

Diana Hacker. 1993. A Pocket Manual of Style. New York: St. Martin's.

Michael J. Katz. 1985. Elements of the Scientific Paper: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students and Professionals. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Beth Luey. 1995. Handbook for Academic Authors, 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. 1972. The Elements of Style. New York: MacMillan. [the classic guide to expository writing in English]

Kate L. Turabian. 1987. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses and Dissertations (5th edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [This has long been the standard reference for dissertations. Turabian’s bibliographic reference style has been somewhat superceded by the APA and MLA standards, but the book covers much, much more than this.]

 

Week 9: Policy Evaluation and Quasi-Experimental Design
30 October

Readings: Johnson and Joslyn, chapter 5.

Jarol B. Manheim and Richard C. Rich. 1995. Empirical Political Analysis. White Plains, NY: Longman, chapter 5.

 

Week 10: Regression Analysis
6 November

Readings: Agresti and Finlay, chapters 9, 10, 11

Assignment (due Week 12): Statistical exercise in the interpretation and computation of a multiple regression equation.

 

 

Week 11: The Analysis of Secondary Sources; Content Analysis
13 November

Readings: Johnson and Joslyn, chapter 9.

Philip A. Schrodt, Shannon G. Davis and Judith L. Weddle. 1994. "KEDS–A Program for the Machine Coding of Event Data." Social Science Computer Review 12,3: 561-588. [XR]

Assignment: (due at the beginning of class): In the library or other sources (e.g. ICPSR or the Internet), locate some sources of quantitative data relevant to a political research. Following class, you will download this or some other data set, convert it to a form that can be analyzed with Stata, and run some simple descriptive statistics on it. (this part of the assignment is due 20 November)

 

Week 12: Techniques of Field Research
20 November

Readings: Review "Elite Interviewing" section in Johnson and Joslyn, chapter 10;

Manheim and Rich. Empirical Political Analysis. chapter 11.

Charlotte Allen. 1997. "Spies Like Us: When Sociologists Deceive their Subjects". Lingua Franca (November 1997) pp. 31-39.[XR]

Fiona McLaughlin and Thierno Seydou Sall. 1999. "The give and take of fieldwork: Noun classes and other concerns in Fatick, Senegal 1989." In Paul Newman and Martha Raliff, eds. Linguistic fieldwork: A collection of essays on the practice of empirical linguistic research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [XR] (this is a good description of the experience of field research in less-developed areas; just read past the linguistic content)

Guest Speakers: Various faculty who use field techniques in their research.

 

Week 13: Logit Analysis and still more Regression Analysis
27 November

Readings: Agresti and Finlay, chapters 14, 15.

Assignment (due Week 15): Develop a simple quantitative hypothesis that can be tested using regression analysis, find an appropriate data set (the World Wide Web will be your most likely source) and do an analysis of it.

 

Week 14: Presentation and Critique of Research Papers and Designs
4 December

 

Week 15: Mathematical Modeling
11 December

Readings: Manheim and Rich. Empirical Political Analysis, chapter 19.

Guest speaker: Paul Johnson

 

Final version of paper is due in the Political Science office by 4:30 p.m. on Friday 15 December.

 

Final Exam will be handed out in class on 11 December. Final exam is due in the Political Science office no later than 4:30 pm on Monday 18 December.