Designing
Social Inquiry POLITICAL SCIENCE 3105
University
of Colorado-Boulder
Professor
Office
Ketchum 131D; Email Vanessa.Baird@colorado.edu
http://socsci.colorado.edu/~bairdv/
Office
Hours: Tues-Thurs 2:30-4
(also by
appointment)
The purpose of this
course is to introduce you to the systematic study of political science. We
will study how political scientists explain the attitudes and behaviors of
human beings and how those attitudes and behaviors interact with their
political institutions to achieve various outcomes. This course is designed to survey the wide
range of research designs and methods employed in political science research,
including normative analysis, interpretive analysis and causal analysis. It
will provide an introduction to students planning to write honors theses and
will be useful for any student planning to do research in political science as
part of a senior seminar or capstone course.
In this course, students will have
·
improved their critical thinking skills.
·
engaged in a critical analysis of important theoretical
assumptions, claims, and arguments in a particular aspect of the existing
theoretical literature on a topic in political science.
·
developed an appreciation for the various methods that
political scientists use to explain their world.
The
lectures will provide the necessary background information necessary to complement
your reading. The lectures will not
reproduce the reading. You will be
required to pick a topic from the variety of aspects of political science
scholarship, evaluate that scholarship and develop your own research design
that would add to the current body of knowledge regarding your topic, given
your evaluation of that literature. (The
description of this assignment follows the Course Outline). This approach allows for the achievement of
the goals for this course, which are as follows: 1) to obtain a good understanding of the how
to design inquiry in political science; 2) to obtain familiarity with current
research in an area in political science; and 3) to strengthen critical writing
skills, which means an ability to make non-obvious arguments and to anticipate
and reconcile all possible weaknesses of that argument.
We will be having class
lectures in the data lab in Ketchum. You
should be able to use any of the ITS labs on campus in the same way, logging
with their IdentiKey Login and Password.
The list of the labs
with the numbers of computers, etc. is at http://webdata.colorado.edu/labs/map/,
the more general information on labs is at http://www.colorado.edu/ITS/MSG/itslabs.html
You are required to come to every class day, prepared by the reading for discussion. There will be fourteen homework assignments (listed on website) due throughout the semester;
together, they will be worth 40% of your grade (you will be able to drop two
assignments). There will be four quizzes
throughout the semester, worth a total of 20% of your grade. You can drop one quiz grade. And there will be one 12-15 page research
paper (25%). 5% of your final grade will be based on a three minute oral
presentation of your final research paper.
There is a take home final exam worth 10% of your final grade. These papers,
assignments and quizzes and their respective topics will be discussed during
the course of the semester.
There are many resources on the website (http://sobek.colorado.edu/~bairdv/)
that can be used in preparing exams and the final paper.
You are expected to keep a copy of your work in case
something is lost. Incompletes are
strongly discouraged by the College and are only given for non-academic
reasons.
Please
email me or come by my office at any time to discuss issues with the
class. I am usually there and I usually
answer emails from students within minutes of receiving them. I genuinely look forward to discussing issues
in the class with students. I encourage
you to use email or office visits for any issues related to the class. On the other hand, I do not check voice
mail.
In this class, we will
be dealing with a great number of sensitive issues. I encourage feedback on my teaching style and
the materials, both anonymously by email and otherwise, for any reason at any
time, as long as it is respectful. Along
those same lines, I always encourage students to disagree with anything I say
at any time, again, as long as it is respectful. I expect all students to treat each other
with respect as well. If I feel that you
have treated me or any other student with disrespect, I will ask you to meet me
in my office. If you continue at any
other time to treat me or other students with disrespect, I will ask you to
leave the classroom. Potentially, this
kind of behavior could result in being dropped from the class. If you have any questions about my policies,
or the University’s policy regarding classroom behavior, do not hesitate to
bring it up in class or talk to me about it in my office. The University’s general Code of Conduct can
be found at the following website: http://www.colorado.edu/studentaffairs/judicialaffairs/code.html
and its code of conduct guidelines for the classroom can be found at the
following website: http://www.colorado.edu/policies/classbehavior.html
Campus policy regarding religious observances requires
that faculty make every effort to reasonably and fairly deal with all students
who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams,
assignments or required attendance. See full details at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/fac_relig.html
I
am required by law to report to university officials any sexual harassment that
I observe or that is reported to me. The
university’s sexual harassment policy can be found at the following website. http://www.cusys.edu/~policies/Personnel/sexharass.html
All
the work you do in this course is expected to be your own. Absolutely no
cheating or plagiarism (using someone else’s words or ideas without proper
citation) will be tolerated. Any time
that you consult outside sources, you MUST cite those sources. If your consult outside sources without
citation, even if you are not citing the sources directly, this constitutes
cheating. Failure to put quotation marks
around direct quotations constitutes plagiarism and will always result in an F
for the class. Misattribution of sources
(citing certain quotations or ideas as coming from a source other than the one
that they come from) will result in a lower grade. Any cases of cheating or plagiarism will be
reported to the Office of the Dean of Students.
If you cheat, you will fail the course. Please review the University’s policy
regarding academic integrity: http://www.colorado.edu/policies/acadinteg.html
The
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (
The
purpose of the first part of this class is to differentiate the various kinds
of arguments that political scientists make.
First, there is the issue of fact and summarizing. There are also normative arguments that
communicate what the speaker’s view of what the world “ought” to be. There are also interpretive arguments, as for
example an argument about what the Supreme Court means when it says that speech
that presents a “clear and present danger” is not protected speech. There are also causal arguments, such as
“alienation from the government causes people to participate in politics.” In the beginning of the class, we will talk
about the various different kinds of arguments and there will be a quiz in
which you will be required to differentiate among the various kinds of
arguments. Bring Kellstedt and Whitten
for the quiz – it is open book!
|
Date |
Topic |
|||
|
Tuesday |
August 25 |
Introduction to Political Science and
Political Philosophy |
|
|
|
Thursday |
August 27 |
Introduction to Political Theory |
Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapter 1, 2 |
|
|
Tuesday |
September 1 |
Quiz I: Statement types (bring your book) |
Assignment 1: Write an essay defending an
original political theory |
|
|
Thursday |
September 3 |
Evaluating causal arguments |
Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapter 3 |
|
The next portion of the class deals with
causal theory. The most important yet
most difficult job of a social scientist is to explain why things happen. What causes war? What causes people to
participate in politics? What causes democratic stability? One way to answer
such questions is to identify variation in war, participation and democratic
stability and then look for attributes that go along with these political
phenomena. Causal theories ought to be
as exhaustive as possible; however, your model of the world must not (and
actually should not) match the world precisely.
Thus, we develop a model of the work with the simultaneous goal of
keeping the explanations as simple as possible while being as accurate as
possible. This section will deal with
how to think about variation and variables, how to find evidence for
co-variation and how to measure variables.
We will also engage in questions of how to “control” for other variables
in your model of political phenomena.
We will also look at the notion of “spurious”
and “intervening” relationships.
Spurious relationships occur when concepts are empirically correlated
but not because they are causally related.
Intervening relationships happen when one variable causes another which
then causes another. We will look at
several ways of using data analysis to show that relationships are either
spurious or intervening, using crosstab analysis and multiple regression
analysis.
|
Date |
Topic |
Assignment
or Reading Due |
|
|
Thursday |
September 10 |
||
|
Tuesday |
September 15 |
Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapters 5 and 6 |
|
|
Thursday |
September 17 |
Assignment 2: Invent a concept and then
create a variable that would measure that concept |
|
|
Tuesday |
September 22 |
Assignment 3: open a data set using SPSS,
conduct frequency and central tendency analysis |
|
|
Thursday |
September 24 |
Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapter 7 |
|
|
Tuesday |
September 29 |
|
|
|
Thursday |
October 1 |
Discussion of final paper |
Assignment 4: Invent an example of a
spurious relationship |
|
Tuesday |
October 6 |
Quiz II: Variables,
concepts, units, spurious relationships |
Assignment 5: Paper topic and bibliography |
|
Thursday |
October 8 |
Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapter 8 and 9 |
|
|
Tuesday |
October 13 |
Assignment 6: Crosstab and correlation
analysis |
|
|
Thursday |
October 15 |
Using
controls in crosstabs: identifying spurious and intervening effects |
Assignment 7: Bivariate regression analysis |
|
Tuesday |
October 20 |
Using controls
in crosstabs: identifying spurious and intervening effects |
Assignment 8: Crosstab analysis,
controlling for a common cause |
|
Thursday |
October 22 |
Using controls in crosstabs: identifying
interaction effects I |
|
|
Tuesday |
October 27 |
Review: Controlling for a third variable |
Assignment 9: Crosstab analysis,
controlling for an intervening cause |
|
Thursday |
October 29 |
Quiz III: Crosstabs, controls, and
bivariate regression |
|
|
Tuesday |
November 3 |
Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapter 10 |
|
The next section of the course will deal with
a variety of kinds of research designs, with a particular focus on situations
in which the data are “messy” or when you have to collect your own data. We will think carefully about the rules of
inference that are applied for the various kinds of designs. We will be focusing on qualitative analysis,
such as case study analysis, with a particular emphasis on selecting those
cases. You will be aware of how
selection bias could affect your inferences.
We will also look at how to collect your own data, using surveys or
experiments. You will be expected to
criticize various research designs in the literature as well as to design some
of your own research ideas.
|
Thursday |
November 5 |
Interpreting Multiple Regression I |
|
|
Tuesday |
November 10 |
Interpreting Multiple Regression II |
Assignment 10: Multiple regression analysis |
|
November 12 |
Criticizing
Multiple Regression |
Kellstedt
and Whitten, Chapter 12 |
This portion of the class has to do with
interpretation and normative political theory.
One way of engaging in political science is to do careful textual
analysis of ancient and contemporary texts.
These texts could be works of political philosophy or historical
archives or legal documents. The meaning
of the text is interesting because it could give us insights into human nature
or how political institutions affect human behavior. We will be investigating how to engage in
textual analysis with an in class assignment and an out of class assignment in
interpreting Rousseau’s view of human nature.
The question in these assignments is: what does Rousseau mean when he
says what he says. We will then engage
in contemporary normative analysis in which we will read a contemporary
political scientist, Tom Regan, and his ethics about human and animal life. Having discussed this example of contemporary
normative analysis, students will come up with their own example of a normative
research idea. We will also read an
example of using historical interpretative analysis.
|
Tuesday |
November 17 |
Experimental designs |
|
|
Thursday |
November 19 |
Case study analysis and selection bias |
Assignment 11: Outline plus one section of
the literature review for final paper |
|
Tuesday |
December 1 |
Interpretation: in class assignment:
Rousseau’s First Discourse |
Assignment 12: Design an Experimental Research
Design Reading: Rousseau, Second Discourse (on
website; print and bring to class) |
|
Thursday |
December 3 |
Normative analysis |
Assignment 13: One page interpretation of
Rousseau’s Second Discourse |
|
Tuesday |
December 8 |
Normative analysis: Research design ideas |
Assignment 14: Normative research idea |
|
Thursday |
December 10 |
Oral Presentations |
|
Final exam will be a take
home exam. You will read a political
science article and provide a three page critical essay of that study.
You should find a research topic dealing with political
science. Everyone’s research question is
the same: What causes ______ to vary/change (across people, geographic units,
time)? You should review the academic
literature associated with previously found explanation for what makes your
____ vary/change (across people, geographic units, time)? From that literature, you should deduce your
own theory from an idea that comes from a lacuna (something missing) in that
literature. You should develop a
research design that would answer the question and explain how you intend to go
about doing this research and the implications of the findings that you
expect.
I.
Research Question – First Sentence or
Two. What causes ______?
II.
Why the Question is
Important
– 2 pages.
III.
Literature Review – 6-8 pages. This is the bulk of the paper. The outline of this section is a list of
causes of the political phenomenon you are interested in. You should highlight and resolve to the best
of your ability any contradictions to the literature. Think of this part of the paper that is
making the argument that YOUR study needs to be done. Each section will be an argument about the
manner and extent to which that particular concept causes your political
phenomenon of interest. Be sure to
consider both sides of the argument. You
will need to deal with all relevant counterarguments.
Here is an example of an outline of the literature
review:
What causes the tendency to litigate to vary across
people?
A.
Political disadvantage
B.
Perception that courts are fair
C.
Social networks
D.
Anger
E.
Self esteem
F.
Severity of the grievance
G.
Attribution of blame of government
H.
Resources (income, wealth, information, education)
For each bullet point, you will mention what the
literature has to say about whether this concept causes a tendency to litigate.
You will discuss many different scholars and their findings in terms of how
they relate to your conclusions about the manner and extent to which each
concept is a cause of your political phenomenon of interest.
IV.
Summary of Literature
Review:
Implications for your Research. One or two paragraphs. The summary of the literature review should
introduce your research design. How are
you going to contribute to what we already know?
V.
Research Design. 2-3 pages.
VI.
Discussion of the
Implications of Expected Findings: You should answer the question: What difference
does it make for our understanding of politics, perhaps in terms of how
minorities can be better protected, better representation, better economic
growth, or other things that we care about … that we now know what we are able
to conclude from your research? 2 pages.
You will be graded on the rigor of your discussion of the
literature and on the internal consistency of your arguments. I will pay close attention to whether you
have considered all potential counterarguments or inconsistencies presented by
the literature in your discussion. You
will also be graded on the creativity of the research design as well as your
ability to answer the question: what difference does this research make in its
contribution to previous literature? The
answer to this question enables you to connect the first parts of the paper
with the last.