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GT24M:
Research Methods in Political Science |
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| Instructor: Dr. Lawrence Alfred Powell (PhD MIT) |
| Teaching Assistant and Tutorial Coordinator : Kim Emmanuel (UWI) |
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| IR, PA, and PS majors are required to take GT24M/31M (but minors are not). |
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| COURSE PREREQUISITES:(METHODS-RELATED): SY13B, and either EC16A or SY16C; |
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| (GOVT courses): GT11A, GT11B (N.B. The Government Department requries these as formal prerequisites, i.e. they must be met before one can be admitted to the 24M course.) |
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| [ Click HERE to download the Lexicon document for GT24M ] |
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| COURSE DESCRIPTION |
This course builds on the elementary knowledge of statistics provided in the first year of the degree programme, and is designed to provide students with a grounding in theories and methods of empirical political analysis. Primary emphasis will be placed on developing a basic understanding of the philosophy and the logic underlying social-scientific inquiry, and appropriate research strategies, both quantitative and qualitative. Topics to be covered include philosophy/epistemology of social science, theoretical paradigms underlying political/policy research, conceptualisation and operationalisation, measurement theory, common data-collection strategies, training in use of computers and SPSS, probability and sampling, univariate analysis, bivariate analysis, and a brief overview of some commonly-used multivariate techniques. The first part of the course will be devoted to reviewing the methodological underpinnings of empirical research in the social sciences and to learning some basic statistical computer procedures for analyzing sociopolitical data. The second part of the course will be devoted to more specialized topics in the conduct of political research (including techniques of ‘qualitative analysis’), and to supervised student research projects. |
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| FORMAT, REQUIREMENTS |
| The course format consists of a combination of weekly lectures, assigned readings, data lab exercises, and independent student projects. Problem solving is the best way to learn methods, and hands-on data lab training sessions will therefore be used. All GT24M students are required to register for, and to regularly attend, one of these labs which will be held on a weekly basis in the Population Lab, beginning in the second or third week. In addition to these weekly lab sessions, students will be responsible for compiling a personal 'lexicon’ of terms commonly used in sociopolitical research (a vocabulary-building exercise), which will be used in studying for the mid-year and the final exams. They will also be required during semester II to independently conduct and write up a brief research project which incorporates methods they have learned during the first semester. Please try to attend all scheduled class meetings, as lectures, lab sessions etc. cannot be made up later, and missing even one session will put you at a disadvantage. |
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| ASSESSMENT |
- 40% coursework ( Semester I exam 15%, independent research paper 25%)
- 60% final exam
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| COURSE WEBSITE |
Reading lists, assignment sheets, codebooks for the datasets, and other useful resources for learning political science methodology will be posted throughout the year on the course website(s). |
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| READINGS & LAB EXERCISES |
Assigned readings and lab exercises will be announced in class, in the lab-tutorials, and posted on the GT24M class website. The articles and book chapters that are required as background reading for each of the Semester I ‘lecture topics’ listed below can be obtained from the Joint Board of Teacher Education. These may be purchased from JBTE separately (i.e. as individual articles), or as a complete package. These same chapters/articles will also be made available through DITTO(next to the main library). Some (but not all) of them are also in the reserve section of the Main Library. As many of these readings are taken from the ‘preescribed’ and the ‘recommended’ course texts (see Babbie, Boxill, Neuman etc. texts below), students may find it more convenient to purchase a personal copy of one or more of those texts from the University Bookshop (though supplies are typically very limited, and we are unfortunately in competition with a number of other large university ‘social science methods’ courses for these limited copies, so the bookstore’s supplies are rarely sufficient to cover student demand.) |
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| PRESCRIBED TEXTS |
- Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research ( Stamford , CT : Wadsworth / Thomson, current edition).
- Alan Bryman, Quantitative Data Analysis with SPSS for Windows ( London : Routledge). (Must be the 2001 edition, or later, as the 1997 edition will not match the version of SPSS currently installed in the lab.)(This text will be helpful as an aid to learning SPSS and conducting your research project.)
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| STRONGLY RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTAL TEXTS |
- Ian Boxill et al., Intro. to Social Research, with Applications to the Caribbean (Canoe Press, UWI, 1997) *
- W. Lawrence Neuman, Social Research Methods (Allyn and Bacon, several editions – any of which is adequate) *
- Janet Buddolph Johnson, Political Science Methods (Congressional Quarterly Press, current edition).
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*Available in limited quantities in the University Bookshop. Copies of earlier editions of the Babbie, Neuman and Johnson texts can also be accessed in RBC, though page numbers and chapter order will vary somewhat from the current editions.
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| ADDITIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODOLOGY TEXTS THAT CONTAIN HELPFUL CHAPTERS RELATED TO THE CONTENT OF THIS COURSE |
(N.B. Some of these can be accessed through RBC. The JBTE packet also contains excerpts from some of these.)
- W. Phillips Shively , The Craft of Political Research (Sage, 1998)
- Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Cornell Univ. Press, 1997) Edward Tufte, Data Analysis for Politics and Policy (Prentice Hall, 1994)
- Hubert Blalock, Social Statistics (McGraw Hill, 1979);
- Earl Babbie, Survey Research Methods ( Wadsworth , either 1 st or 2 nd edition
- Anne Thomson, Critical Reasoning: A Practical Introduction (Routledge, 1996).
- Roger Wimmer and Joseph Dominick Mass Media Research ( Wadsworth , 1991)
- Jarol Manheim et al., Empirical Political Analysis: Research Methods in Political Science (Longman, 2002).
- Paul Pennings et al., Doing Research in Political Science: An Introduction to Comparative Methods and Statistics (Sage, 1999)
- Peter Burnham et al., Research Methods in Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
- Kenneth Meier, Applied Statistics for Public Administration (Harcourt, 1997)
- Susan Welch and John Comer, Quantitative Methods for Public Administration (Harcourt, 2001)
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COURSE CONTENT: SEMESTER I |
Approximately one unit is covered per week, though this will vary somewhat according to topic. Associated readings and lab exercises will be announced in class, in the lab-tutorials, and/or posted on the GT24M class website.
(Note that these are the semester I topics. The Semester II ‘special lecture topics’, and the guidelines for student research projects, will be posted on the course website as they are finalised.)
- Course overview, introduction to research methodology in the social and policy sciences
- Philosophical perspectives on the research process (epistemology, paradigms, scientific revolutions, logical positivism, Verstehen, quantitative and qualitative analysis, reasoning errors common in ordinary human inquiry
- The language of social research: theory and conceptualisation
- The language of social research: operationalisation and measurement theory
- The language of social research: causality, hypothesis formulation/testing, probability, ‘significance’
- Applying univariate statistics in social/policy analysis: frequency distributions, measures of central tendency and dispersion
- Applying bivariate statistics: contingency tables and measures of association
- Bivariate statistics (cont.): correlation and regression
- Integrating your acquired knowledge into a workable research project / How to apply the universally-accepted criteria for ‘good’ research / Review and preparation for the mid-year exam
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September 2005 |
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