Introduces the process of social research, emphasizing the conceptualization of research choices to ensure validity, relevance, and discovery. Includes research design and techniques of data collection as well as issues in the understanding, analysis, and interpretation of data. This course is designed to lay the foundations of good empirical research in the social sciences. It does not deal with specific techniques per se, but rather with the assumptions and the logic underlying social research. Students become acquainted with a variety of approaches to research design, and are helped to develop their own research projects and to evaluate the products of empirical research.
This course is designed to provide an introduction to a variety of empirical research methods used by political scientists. The primary aims of the course are to make you a more sophisticated consumer of diverse empirical research and to allow you to conduct advanced independent work in your junior and senior years. This is not a course in data analysis. Rather, it is a course on how to approach political science research.
Seminar explores the development and application of qualitative research designs and methods in political analysis. Considers a broad array of approaches, from exploratory narratives to focused-comparison case studies, for investigating plausible alternative hypotheses. The focus is on analysis, not data collection.
" This course develops logical, empirically based arguments using statistical techniques and analytic methods. Elementary statistics, probability, and other types of quantitative reasoning useful for description, estimation, comparison, and explanation are covered. Emphasis is on the use and limitations of analytical techniques in planning practice."
This course develops logical, empirically based arguments using statistical techniques and analytic methods. It covers elementary statistics, probability, and other types of quantitative reasoning useful for description, estimation, comparison, and explanation. Emphasis is placed on the use and limitations of analytical techniques in planning practice. This course is required for and restricted to first-year M.C.P. students.
This course develops skills in research design for policy analysis and planning. The emphasis is on the logic of the research process and its constituent elements. The course relies on a seminar format so students are expected to read all of the assigned materials and come to class prepared to discuss key themes, ideas, and controversies. Since the materials draw broadly on the social sciences, and since students have diverse interests and methodological preferences, ongoing themes in our discussions will be linking concepts to planning scholarship in general and considering how different epistemological orientations and methodological techniques map on to planning specializations.
This course introduces some of the basic research tools in the political scientist’s “tool kit” and discusses why and how certain tools are used to explore certain phenomena. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: describe the relationship between the scientific method and political science; formulate research questions, theories, and hypotheses; describe the basics of the standard research approaches in political science; evaluate the soundness of a research design; perform basic statistical analyses; execute basic research in the political science discipline. This free course may be completed online at any time. (Political Science 251)
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