POLS
602 – Fall 2009
Scope
& Method I: Research Design
Professor
Mikel Wyckoff
Office: Zulauf 403
Hours: MWF 11-12:00 & by Appointment
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 602 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
READINGS
Royce
A. Singleton and
Selected chapters from: Michael K. LeRoy, Research Methods in Political Science
(7th
ed.), Cengage-Wadsworth, 2009. These can be purchased as electronic “i-chapters”
online at
the Cengage web site:
ichapters.com/tl1/en/US/storefront/ichapters?cmd=catProductDetail&ISBN=9780495502838&cid=APL1#
Students also will read one of the following books for an assignment
in the second half of
the course: Richard Fenno, Home Style (1978) or John Kingdon, Congressmen’s Voting
Decisions (1989). The Fenno book
involves field research that borders on participant
observation. The Kingdon study
features in-depth interviews with political elites.
Other required readings in the form
of online articles, available on the POLS 602 Blackboard
website,
e-reserves, or at www.jstor.org, also
appear in the syllabus.
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, or in the SOCQRL
computing lab in DuSable Hall. The extra
fee charged for taking POLS 602 helps fund this very useful research facility
which was established by Professor Charles Cappell. If you happen to run into Professor Cappell, please thank him for his willingness to share the
Sociology Department’s computer labs with us.
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 six 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 O’s and X’s 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 November 30.
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 READING ASSIGNMENTS
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. Readings marked as "suggested" are
just that—suggested in case you want to read more about the topics covered that
week.
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
8/24
Required: Singleton and Straits, Preface and
Week 2 – Epistemological Issues: science as a philosophy
of knowledge or method of knowing; the
8/31 the
nature of concepts and theories; stages of social research; getting started
Required:
Singleton and Straits,
pp. 108-111 (stages of research); and Ch. 17 and pp. 568-573
(literature review).
Stephen J. Gould,
"The Freezing of Noah" (available on Blackboard).
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 Coyne,
“In Science, Fact, Not Faith, Measures Ideas’ Validity,”
(available
on Blackboard)
The Craft of Political
Research (e-reserves).
Microcase:
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 3 – Labor Day; No Class
9/7
Week 4 – Units of Analysis and the Problem of Measurement
9/14
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Ch. 5 (all); Ch. 13, pp. 434-439 (multiple item scales or indices).
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.
Microcase:
Suggested: Kerlinger,
Foundations of Behavioral Research.
Zeller and
Carmines, Measurement in the Social
Sciences.
Week 5 – Thinking About Variables and Their Relationships
9/21
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Swedlow and
American Public Opinion,” American
Politics Research (2010). Location
tba.
Microcase:
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 6 – Strengthening Both
Descriptive and Causal Inferences:
Random Sampling and Random Assignment
9/28
Annotated
bibliography due today
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Microcase:
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 nation’s top sampling
statisticians;
lots of concrete examples)
Kish, Survey Sampling (rigorous, classic text
on sample design and sampling
issues by another superb sampling statistician).
Week 7 – General Strategies for Research Design I: Experiments
10/5
Required: Singleton and
Straits, Ch. 7 (remainder) and
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
10/12
Required: Singleton and Straits, Ch. 7, p. 237
(review) and pp. 250-end; Ch. 15,
pp. 536-537, 542-552. Locate the
following articles at www.jstor.org:
Easton and Dennis, “The
Child’s Acquisition of Regime Norms,” APSR, 1967,
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 Campbell, Quasi-experimentation.
Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, “Comparative
Democracy: The Economic Development
Thesis,”
APSR, 1994, pp. 903-910 (good, example of a relatively sophisticated
time series study). For an
easier introduction to the technique see the Lewis-
Beck and Alford article assigned in Week 13 below.
Stoker and
of Marriage,” APSR, 1995, pp. 421-433 (example of a panel study).
Week 9 – MIDTERM EXAM
10/19
Week 10 – Data Collection Methods I: Survey Research
10/26
Required: Singleton and Straits,
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
11/2
Draft research proposal due today
Required: Singleton and
Straits, Ch. 12 and pp. 81-84 (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.
Carson, Jenkins, Rohde, and Souva,
"The Impact of National Tides and District-
Level
Effects on Electoral Outcomes: The U.S. Congressional Elections of
1862-63."
AJPS, 2001, pp. 887-898.
Suggested: Weber, Basic Content Analysis.
Yamaguchi, Event History Analysis.
Week 12 – Data
Collection Methods III: Field Research
and Small-N Studies
11/9
Required: Singleton and Straits,
Fenno, Home Style, or Kingdon, Congressmen’s
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
11/16
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
11/23
Required: Singleton and
Straits, Ch. 3; Ch. 17, pp. 573-end.
Week 15 – Catch Up Day
11/30
Final research
proposals are due today.
Week 16 – FINAL EXAM:
Wednesday December 9,