POLS 502 Fall 2007
Research Design and Analysis
Professor Mikel Wyckoff
Office: Zulauf 403
Hours: MW 11-12:15 & by Appt.
753-7056 mwyckoff@niu.edu
I. INTRODUCTION
This first semester
of the scope and method sequence focuses on a variety of issues that must be
considered when planning and executing a research project. The goals of the
course are to introduce major research strategies and data collection methods
extant in the political science literature and to lay out some of the
philosophical underpinnings of the social science research process. While POLS
502 is definitely not a course in
statistics, it will provide a very brief introduction to data analysis that
will help you better understand certain research design issues and provide a
useful bridge to other, more quantitative courses.
II. REQUIRED
Royce A. Singleton and
Students also will read one of the following books for an
assignment in the second half
of the course: Richard Fenno, Home Style or John Kingdon,
Congressmens Voting
Decisions (1989).
Other readings in the form of:
handouts, distributed in class from time to time and articles
available
online.
III. COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Class
Participation.
Although I will be lecturing more than would be the case if the class had a
traditional, seminar format, I expect everyone to come to class prepared to
discuss the assigned readings.
Exams. A midterm and a final exam
will be given.
Computer
Exercises. Four
or five computer exercises will be assigned during the semester. Each will
receive a grade of pass, or fail. Inadequate exercises can
be redone and resubmitted. Failure to achieve a grade of at least
"pass" on all assignments will result in a one-letter reduction in
your course grade. No one should be frightened by these assignments. No
previous experience with statistics is required and all work can be completed
in the POLS Computer Lab on the first floor of Zulauf Hall. The extra fee
charged for taking POLS 502 helps fund this departmental facility.
Research Design. Each student will prepare an
original research proposal based on a topic of his or her choice. Additional
guidelines for the proposal will be discussed in coming weeks. All proposals must
include procedures for testing a causal hypothesis, and the procedures
chosen should maximize (within reason and within the bounds of practicality)
your ability to conduct a rigorous test of the hypothesis. Two preliminary
elements of the design are required before the end of the semester:
Annotated Bibliography (3-5 pages, due by Week 6). To
ensure that everyone gets started
on
the research proposal in a timely fashion I will ask you to start digging into
the political
science literature right away
and generate an annotated bibliography based on the studies
you locate. This preliminary
paper should: (1) provide a brief description of your research
problem;
and (2) briefly summarize the salient features of at least eight books, book
chapters,
or
articles in scholarly journals that have relevance for your final research
proposal. One good
paragraph
for each work cited should be satisfactory. With additional work, this initial
bibliography
should evolve into the literature review portion of your research proposal.
Research Design Prospectus
(maximum 3 pages, due by Week 11). This second preliminary
Paper
will provide a brief summary and overview of your final research design as you
envision
it
at Week 11. It should include: (1) a brief description of your research
problem; (2) one or
more specific hypotheses to be
tested; (3) an Os and Xs scheme that applies to your anti-
cipated
research design, along with supporting discussion (this will make more sense as
time
goes on); (4) tentative plans for collecting and analyzing the data needed to
test your
hypotheses.
Final
Research Design.
Your final research proposal should be approximately 15-20 pages
in
length (typed and double‑spaced). All proposals are due on December 3.
Late papers
will
be penalized at the rate of one-third of a letter grade per day.
Grading System. Final grades will be computed
as follows:
Exam
I 30%
Exam
II 30
Annotated
Bibliography 5
RD
Prospectus 5
Final
Research Design 20
Class
Participation 10
100%
IV. WEEKLY TOPICS AND
You are responsible
for all of the readings listed on the following pages as "required."
Journal articles can be found online at www.jstor.org.
The following
journal abbreviations are used in the outline:
APSR = American Political Science Review
AJPS = American Journal of Political Science
POQ =
Public Opinion Quarterly
Week 1 Overview
of course and a preliminary look at the nature of scientific inquiry
8/27
Week 2 Labor Day;
No Class
9/3
Week 3 Epistemological
Issues: science as a philosophy of knowledge or method of knowing; the
9/10 the
nature of concepts and theories
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Ch. 1-2.
Stephen
J. Gould, "The Freezing of Noah" (handout).
Krauthammer,
"Let's Have No More Monkey Trials," locate online at:
staff.science.nus.edu.sg/~sivasothi/biorefugia/2005/08/time-lets-have-no-more-monkey-trials.html
Dawkins and
Coin, In Science, Fact, Not Faith, Measures Ideas Validity,
locate at:
http://blog.zmag.org/comment/reply/2413/51477
Suggested: Suggested readings
are just that suggested for those who
want to do additional
reading for fun
and/or for their own personal edification.
Nash, The Nature of the Natural Sciences.
Hayek, The Theory of
Complex Reality, in Studies in
Philosophy,
Politics
and Economics.
Beveridge,
The Art of Scientific Investigation
(especially good on the
origins of
concepts and theories).
Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry.
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Lakatos and Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.
Pirsig, Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Week 4 Basic
Elements of Research Design
9/17
Required: Singleton and Straits,
The Craft of Political Research (e-reserves).
Suggested: Kerlinger,
Foundations of Behavioral Research (a
classic text on research
design written by a prominent psychologist; see initial
chapters).
Babbie, The Practice
of Social Research (a very good, upper level under-
graduate
text on research design).
Manheim and
Rich, Techniques of Systematic Bibliographic Research,
in
Empirical Political Analysis.
Week 5 Measurement Issues and Elementary Data
Analysis
9/24
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Diamond,
"Soft Sciences Are Often Harder Than Hard Sciences, at:
bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/607%20Diamond%201987.htm
Nash, The Nature of the Natural Sciences, pp.
46-62 (e-reserves).
Sears, et al.,
Is It Really Racism? Public
Opinion Quarterly 61 (1997). Find at
www.jstor.org. Read
esp. pp. 16-28. Focus on the twin problems of defining the
concept of racism and how best
to go about measuring racist values
and beliefs.
Try
to make sense of Table 1.
Suggested:
Kerlinger, Foundations
of Behavioral Research.
Zeller and Carmines, Measurement in the Social Sciences.
Week 6 Strengthening Inferences: Random Sampling and
Random Assignment
10/1
Annotated
bibliography due today
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Suggested: Babbie,
The Practice of Social Research (his
chapter on sampling issues is a very
igood one). See also Survey
Research Methods.
Fowler, Survey
Research Methods (a Sage paperback).
Sudman, Applied Sampling (good book by one of the nations top sampling
statisticians;
lots of concrete examples)
issues by another superb sampling statistician).
Week 7 General
Strategies for Research Design I: Experiments
10/8
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Ch. 6 (remainder) and Ch. 7, pp. 187-206.
Nelson, et al.,
Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict APSR 91 (1997).
Find
at www.jstor.org.
Read esp. pp. 567-572. This is an experimental
study. What
makes
it so? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Also,
think consciously about
the
theory that is being tested in this
study.
Streb and
Burrell, Support for a Female
President is Significantly Exaggerated,
locate
at: http://www.niu.edu/PubAffairs/RELEASES/2007/jan/research.shtml
Suggested: Campbell and Stanley,
Experimental and Quasi-experimental
Designs for
Research.
Aronson, Brewer and Carlsmith, Experimentation in Social Psychology"
in
The Handbook of Social Psychology,
1985.
Kinder and
Palfrey, On Behalf of an Experimental Political Science," in
their
(eds.) Experimental Foundations of
Political Science, 1993.
Week 8 General Strategies for Research Design II:
Cross-sectional and Quasi-experimental Designs
10/15
Required:
Singleton and Straits, Ch. 7, p. 194 (review) and pp. 206-end; Ch. 15,
pp. 483-487, 489-499. Locate the following articles at www.jstor.org:
pp.
25-38. Skim some of the discussion of measurement issues. Think hard about
the
multivariate relationships observed in Tables 2-5.
Jackman,
Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in the Industrial
Democracies,
APSR, 1987, pp.
405-420.
Suggested:
Cook and
Burkhart and Lewis-Beck,
Comparative Democracy: The Economic Development
Thesis,
APSR, 1994, pp. 903-910 (good, relatively recent example of recent
example of a sophisticated time series study).
Stoker and
of
Marriage, APSR, 1995, pp. 421-433 (relatively recent example of a panel study).
Week 9 MIDTERM
EXAM
10/22
Week 10 Data
Collection Methods I: Survey Research
10/29
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Ch. 8-9.
Suggested: Dillman,
Mail and Telephone Surveys.
Babbie, Survey
Research Methods.
Schuman and Kalton, Survey Methods, in Handbook of Social Psychology.
Fowler and Mangione,
Standardized Survey Interviewing.
Krueger,
Focus Groups.
Week 11 Data
Collection Methods II: Archival and Other Kinds of Available Data
11/5
Draft research proposal due
today
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Ch. 11 and pp. 46-48 (review).
Excerpt from
Streb, The New Electoral Politics of Race, (e-reserves)
Tate, "A Personal Attribute
Model of the Voting Behavior of Supreme Court Justices,
APSR,
1981, pp. 355-367.
Level Effects on Electoral Outcomes: The
Suggested:
Weber, Basic Content Analysis.
Yamaguchi,
Event History Analysis.
Week 12 Data
Collection Methods III: Field Research and Small-N Studies
11/12
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Fenno, Home Style, or Kingdon,
Congressmens Voting Decisions.
Suggested: King, Keohane and
Verba, Designing Social Inquiry:
Scientific Inference
in
Qualitative Research (an important, relatively recent work that stirred
considerable
controversy when published).
Symposium on the
King et al. book in APSR, 1995, pp. 454-481.
Collier,
The Comparative Method: Two Decades of Change, in Rustow
and
Erickson,
Comparative Political Dynamics.
Jackman, Cross-National Statistical Research and the
Study of Comparative
Politics,
AJPS, 1985, pp. 161-182.
Rubin
and Rubin, Qualitative Interviewing.
Fetterman, Ethnography.
Week 13 Evaluation Research
11/19
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Lewis-Beck and Alford, Can Government Regulate
Safety? The
Coal Mine Example, APSR, 1980, pp. 745-756.
Suggested: Mohr, Impact Analysis for Program Evaluation.
Week 14 Research
Ethics; Writing Research Reports
11/26
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Ch. 16; Ch. 17, pp. 548-end.
Week 15 Catch Up
Day
12/3
Final research proposals are due
today.
Week 16 FINAL
EXAM: Monday December 10, 6:00 7:50