Designing
Social Inquiry POLITICAL SCIENCE 3105
University
of Colorado-Boulder
Professor
Vanessa Baird
Office
Ketchum 131D; Email Vanessa.Baird@colorado.edu
http://socsci.colorado.edu/~bairdv/
Office
Hours: Monday Wednesday 9-10, 11-12
(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.
·
be critical
of those methods.
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.
You can
use the ITS Ketchum data lab, logging with your IdentiKey
Login and Password. You can also purchase Stata (small stata
or student stata for about $50) http://www.stata.com/order/new/edu/gradplan.html
You are required to come to every class
day, prepared by the reading for
discussion. There will be THIRTEEN HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS (CLICK HERE FOR
DESCRIPTION) 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.
All
assignments at the beginning of the class prepare you for assignments 7, 8 and
9. If you don’t understand 1-6, you
cannot do 7-9. If you don’t understand
7-9, you will not be able to complete 10-13. Please be aware that assignments
7-9 represent the foundation of the class.
If you are not clear on assignments 7-9, you will not pass the class.
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. Please
do not email me and ask whether you missed anything in class. Please assume that you missed a great deal
when you miss class. Incompletes are strongly discouraged by the College and
are only given for non-academic reasons.
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 violate the honor code in any way, 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 (ADA) provides protection from illegal
discrimination for qualified individuals with disabilities. Students requesting instructional
accommodations due to disabilities must arrange for such accommodation. Please review the University’s services for
such accommodations: http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices/
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 methodology of generating an ethic about protecting animal life. Having discussed this example of contemporary
normative analysis, students will come up with their own example of a normative
research idea.
Then,
we will learn 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!
|
Week |
Topic |
THIRTEEN HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS (CLICK HERE FOR DESCRIPTION)
Due dates will be discussed in class. |
|
Week 1 |
Introduction Introduction
to Political Theory and Political Philosophy |
Kellstedt
and Whitten, Chapter 1, 2 |
|
Week 2 |
Interpretation:
Rousseau’s Second Discourse |
Assignment
1:
Write an essay defending an original causal political theory Assignment
2:
One page interpretation of Rousseau’s
First Discourse |
|
Week 3 |
Normative
analysis: Research design ideas; Evaluating causal arguments |
Kellstedt
and Whitten, Chapter 3 Quiz I:
Statement types (bring your book) |
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,” “intervening” and conditional
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.
|
Week |
Topic |
THIRTEEN HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS (CLICK HERE FOR DESCRIPTION)
Due date will be
discussed in class. |
|
Week 4 |
Kellstedt
and Whitten, Chapter 1, 2 |
|
|
Week 5 |
Assignment 3: Invent a concept and then create a variable that would measure that
concept Assignment 4: Open the National Election Study using Stata, conduct frequency and
central tendency analysis Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapter
8 |
|
|
Week 6 |
Kellstedt
and Whitten, Chapter 3 |
|
|
Week 7 |
Quiz
II:
Variables, concepts, units, spurious relationships; Assignment
5:
Invent an example of a spurious relationship; Kellstedt
and Whitten, Chapter 7, 9 |
We have been spending much of our
time in the social sciences looking at how x causes y. We have learned a great deal using this
strategy but much of the remaining questions to be answered are more complex
than that. Perhaps X only causes Y under a certain condition? Perhaps we have only researched the
relationship between X and Y under certain contexts (most public opinion work
has been done in the western world). Perhaps it is not X
at all, but it turns out to be a variable that correlates with X, or is caused
by X only some of the time – which then leads to Y. The bottom line: “it’s
complicated.”
|
Week |
Topic |
THIRTEEN HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS (CLICK HERE FOR DESCRIPTION)
Due date will be
discussed in class. |
|
Week 8 |
Using controls in crosstabs:
identifying spurious and intervening effects |
Assignment 6: Crosstab and correlation analysis Assignment 7: Bivariate
regression analysis |
|
Week 9 |
Review: Crosstabs,
controls and bivariate regression Discussion
of final paper |
Assignment 8: Crosstab analysis, controlling for a common cause Assignment 9: Crosstab analysis, controlling for an intervening cause |
|
Week 10 |
Using controls in crosstabs:
identifying interaction effects |
Quiz III:
Crosstabs, controls, and bivariate regression |
|
Week 11 |
Interpreting Multiple
Regression Criticizing Multiple Regression |
Kellstedt and Whitten, Chapter
10, 12 Assignment 10: Paper
topic, outline and bibliography |
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.
|
Week |
Topic |
THIRTEEN HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS (CLICK HERE FOR DESCRIPTION)
Due date will be
discussed in class. |
|
Week 12 |
Case study analysis; Rights Revolution |
Ellen
Immergut, Institutions, Veto Points, and Policy
Results: A Comparative Analysis of
Health Care |
|
Week 13 |
Selection bias |
Assignment 11: Revised outline plus one sections of the literature review for
final paper |
|
Week 14 |
Experimental designs |
Gilliam
and Iyengar, Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the
Viewing Public Assignment 12: Case study research proposal, explain how you will “control” for other factors and why you selected these cases |
|
Week 15 |
Historical Interpretation Oral Presentations |
Assignment 13: Experimental research design Quiz IV:
Criticizing multiple regression models and other research designs |
Take home
Final Exam Due, May 1st 5:00 pm, by email
Final
exam will be a take home exam. You will
read a political science article that I will provide for you and provide a
three page critical essay of that study, using the tools that you learned in
class.
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 maximum.
III.
Literature
Review
– 8-10 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.
Number of people in 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.
1 page.
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.