706: Political Science Research Methods Syllabus
Philip A. Schrodt
University of Kansas
Fall, 1999

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. 1995. The Political Science Student Writer's Manual. 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, 29 November) and a significantly revised version (Friday, 10 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 18 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 6 December) and due on the final exam date (Wednesday, 15 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 do them 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 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.

Schedule of Topics and Required Readings

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

23 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]

Week 2: Research Design, Operationalization and Measurement

30 August
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)

Week 3: Sampling and Survey Research

13 September
Readings:

Johnson and Joslyn, chapters 7, 10;

Agresti and Finlay, chapters 1,2

Assignment (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

Johnson and Joslyn, chapters 7, 10;

Agresti and Finlay, chapters 3,4, 5

Assignment (due Week 5):

Statistical exercise with Stata involving basic descriptive statistics and generating graphical displays.

Week 5: Case Studies

27 September
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]

Guest speaker: Elaine Sharp

Week 6: Significance Testing; Analysis of Bivariate Relationships

4 October
Readings:

Johnson and Joslyn, chapters 12;

Agresti and Finlay, chapters 6, 7, 8

Assignments (due at beginning of class):

Initial description of research paper (about one page, including an initial bibliography that includes a discussion of the relevant political science theories)

Assignment (due Week 7): Statistical exercise involving measures of association and comparison of populations

Week 7: Policy Evaluation and Quasi-Experimental Design

11 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 8: MIDTERM EXAM and Elements of the Research Paper

18 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...]
• 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: First Presentation of Research Design

25 October

Assignment:

This class will be used for short presentations of your research question and initial literature review. In addition to the oral presentation, you should prepare a 2-3 page written summary for me to evaluate.

Week 10: Regression Analysis

1 November
Readings:

Agresti and Finlay, chapters 9, 10, 11

Assignment (due Week 11):

Statistical exercise in the interpretation and computation of a multiple regression equation.

Week 11: The Analysis of Secondary Sources; Content Analysis

8 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 15 November)

Week 12: Techniques of Field Research

15 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

22 November
Readings:

Agresti and Finlay, chapters 14, 15;

Assignment (due Week 14):

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

29 November

Week 15: Mathematical Modeling

6 December
Readings:

Manheim and Rich. Empirical Political Analysis, chapter 19

Guest speaker: Paul Johnson

Final version of paper is due in the in the Political Science office by 4:30 pm on Friday 10 December

Final Exam will be handed out in class on 6 December. Final exam is due in the Political Science office by 4:30 pm on Wednesday 15 December.