POLS 206
Political Science Research Methods
Zeynep Kadirbeyoglu
Office: IB 502
Office Hours: Fridays 13.00-14.00 or by appointment
Course
Description and Objectives
This course is
designed to give you an overview of different empirical research methods in
political science. The goal is to equip you with the tools of conducting your
own research and enable you to become a critical reader of diverse types of
political science research papers, articles and books. Course reading pack is
available from Gunel Fotokopi.
Plagiarism and Academic Honesty: Plagiarism is a serious problem and refers
to dishonestly representing someone else’s ideas as your own. Plagiarism is
punished by disciplinary committee and usually results in an F as course grade
and sometimes heavier penalties. All students must understand the meaning and
consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences
The Department of Political Science and International Relations has the
following rules and regulations regarding academic honesty.
1. Copying work
from others or giving and receiving answers/information during exams either in
written or oral form constitutes cheating.
2.
Submitting take-home exams and papers of others as
your own, using sentences or paragraphs from another author without the proper
acknowledgement of the original author, insufficient acknowledgement of the
consulted works in the bibliography, all constitute plagiarism. For further
guidelines, you can consult:
http://library.citytech.cuny.edu/instruction/plagiarism/index.php
3. Plagiarism
and cheating are serious offenses and will result in:
●
an automatic F in the assignment or the exam,
●
an oral explanation before the Departmental Ethics
Committee,
●
losing the opportunity to request and receive any
references from the entire faculty,
●
losing the opportunity to apply in exchange programs,
●
losing the prospects of becoming a student
assistant or a graduate assistant in the department.
The students may further be sent to the University Ethics committee or
be subject to disciplinary action.
Evaluation
1. MIDTERM EXAM 25% -
you are responsible from both class notes and readings. May 18. 17.00 - Location NH104 ve NH105
2. RESEARCH PROJECT -
you should choose the qualitative or the quantitative track.
Please form a group of 5 and think about your research question together. The projects components (all of the steps from I to VI) are to be carried out and submitted as a group. All submissions should be done electronically via an email message sent from one of the group members as a word document. The deadline on these dates is midnight. Late submissions will be penalized as stated below.
I) Formulation of a research question (2.5%) DUE MARCH 16
Write down in a paragraph the research question which
you would like to write your research paper on.
II) Finding appropriate sources from the
literature (2.5%) DUE MARCH 30
You should improve your research question based on my
suggestions and in the meantime conduct a thorough research in the library and
web based databases for articles and books relevant to your research question.
You should compile a list for the bibliography for your research paper. At this
point it is not necessary that you read all the articles and books in this list
but you should at least have skimmed through in order to know whether they will
be relevant to your research.
III) Writing the literature review and
making your research question more specific (10%) DUE APRIL 13
Provide a
brief literature review that justifies your study and sets the theoretical
framework for your research paper. Do not forget to include the bibliography at
the end.
Qualitative track:
IV) Research (20%) DUE MAY 4
Formulate your
hypotheses
Conduct interviews
Transcribe
Write field notes
V) Analysis (30%) DUE MAY 25
Analysis of data:
Write your findings
and your conclusion and put together the research report.
Quantitative track:
IV) Research (20%) DUE MAY 4
Formulate your
hypotheses
Discuss
conceptualization and measurement
Find an appropriate
database
V) Analysis (30%) DUE MAY 25
Analysis of data
using SPSS
Tables and charts
Interpretation of
results and conclusion; put together the research report
VI) Presentation (10%) DUE MAY 20
Details will
be announced later
Late papers/reviews/assignments: there will be 3 percent penalty per
day for late papers and reviews.
Course Schedule
Introduction and
course overview
Why do we study
research methods? Why is it necessary?
What should we know
after the course is over?
Philosophy of
social sciences
What is science? Scientific
method. Paradigms. Social science research? What is distinctive about it? What
is scientific about political science?
●
Gabriel
A. Almond; Stephen J. Genco. "Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of
Politics" World Politics, Vol. 29,
No. 4. (Jul., 1977), pp. 489-522
●
Rogers
M. Smith 1997. Still Blowing in the Wind: The American Quest for a Democratic,
Scientific Political Science. Daedalus, Vol. 126, No. 1, pp. 253-287.
●
Hirschman,
A. O., 1970 (April). “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding,”
World Politics, 22 (3): 329
●
Hall,
PA. 2003. Aligning Ontology and Methodology in
Comparative Research. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences.
(James Mahoney, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Eds.).:Ch.11., Cambridge, UK and New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Positivist
versus Interpretivist Traditions
●
Lin, A.
C. 1998. “Bridging Positivist and Interpretive Approaches to Qualitative
Methods” Policy Studies Journal. 26(1): 162-180.
●
Wedeen,
L. Ethnography as Interpretive Enterprise in Edward Schatz, ed., Political
Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power (Chicago, 2009)
●
Steflja,
I. Positivist and Interpretivist Traditions.
Research process
in political science:
Research
questions, theories, concepts and hypotheses
Research Design
Large N studies,
case studies etc.
How to formulate
research questions? What are theories, concepts and hypotheses?
Conceptualization,
operationalization, measurement.
Index and scale.
Validity and
reliability.
Ethics
Writing in social
sciences
●
Manheim
et al. 2008. Chapter 2. Theory Building: Concepts, and hypotheses in political
research
●
Nachmias
and Nachmias Chapter 3 Basic Elements of Research
●
Munck
and Verkuilen. 2002. Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating
Alternatibe Indices. Comparative Poitical Studies. Vol 35. No.1.
●
Nachmias
and Nachmias Chapter 4 - Ethics in Social Science Research.
●
Becker,
H.S. 1986. Writing for social scientists. The University of Chicago Press.
Proposal writing
●
Sample
proposal in the reading pack.
●
Miriam
Golden. 2001. “Why Do Trade Unions Call Strikes That Seem Sure to Fail?” in
Political Science as Puzzle Solving, ed. Bernard Grofman. Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press.
Conducting
Literature Reviews and the Issue of Plagiarism
●
Bottholph
and johnson Chapter 5 - Conducting a Literature Review.
●
Avoiding
and Detecting Plagiarism - The City University of New York.
Fieldwork
●
Wood,
E.J. 2009. “Field Research” in Boix and Stokes eds. Oxford Handbook of
Comparative Politics.
Sampling
●
Nachmias
and Nachmias Chpater 8 - Sampling and Sample Designs.
Experimental
Method
●
Hyde,
S.D. 2007. The Observer Effect in International Politics: Evidence from a
Natural Experiment. World Politics. 60.
Collecting data
through surveys and scaling thechniques
●
Mannheim
Chapters on survey research and scaling techniques. pp. 137-179.
Collecting data
through qualitative methods: interviews, participant observation, focus groups,
political ethnography
●
Leech,
Beth L. ed. Symposium on “Interview Methods in Political Science” PS: Political
Science and Politics 23:3 (December 2002), 663-676.
●
Michael
Burawoy. Appendix. Teaching participant observation in Burawoy ed. Ethnography
unbound : power and resistance in the modern metropolis.
●
Schatz,
E. 2009. Ethnographic Immersion and the Study of Politics. in Edward Schatz,
ed., Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power
(Chicago, 2009)
●
Bratton,
Michael and Liatto-Katundu, Beatrice. “A Focus Group Assessment of Political
Attitudes in Zambia.” African Affairs 93: 373 (October 1994), 535-63.
●
Williams,
Christine L. and Heikes, E. Joel. “The Importance of Researcher’s Gender in the
In-Depth Interview: Evidence from Two Case Studies of Male Nurses.” Gender
&Society 7:2 (June 1993), 280-91.
Archival
research
●
Berg,
B.L. Qualitative Research Methods, p. 271-287 (Archival Strategies)
Research in the
field of International Relations and Histroical Analysis
●
Marc
Trachtenberg. The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2006. pp. 169-182.
Analysis of
qualitative data
●
Berg,
B.L. Qualitative Research Methods, p. 146-153 (Analyzing data obtained from
interviews)
●
Haydar
Darici. 2011. Politics of privacy: forced migration and the spatial struggle of
the Kurdish youth. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. Vol 13. No 4.
Analysis of
quantitative data
Optional readings
are available from Gunel Fotokopi
Examples which will
be discussed in class
●
Putnam,
Robert D. et al. 1983. "Explaining Institutional Success: The Case of
Italian Regional Government." American Political Science Review 77
(1):55-74.
●
Jackman,
Robert W. 1973. "On the Relation of Economic Development to Democratic
Performance." American Journal of Political Science 17 (3):611-21.
●
Tavits,
M. 2007. Clarity of Responsibility and Corruption. American Journal of
Political Science. Vol 51 No.1.
Content analysis
●
Berg,
B.L. Qualitative Research Methods, p. 338-377 (An Introduction to Content
Analysis)
Disseminating
your findings and conclusion
●
Mannheim.
Chapter 22 - Writing (and reading) the research report.
●
Mannheim
Chapter 23 - overview of research process.
