POL 200 Investigating Politics

This documents explains how to critically read and dissect peer-reviewed empirical research papers in political science and related disciplines. It also illustrates how political scientists create knowledge about politics. This document explains the main components of a standard research paper – puzzle, theory, hypotheses, concepts, data, and analysis – in order to increase one's ability to understand and evaluate the argument.

Many courses in Political Science require students to write an “original” research paper employing either quantitative or qualitative data analysis. To succeed in this endeavour, it is vital to come up with a good question that is feasible and passes the “who cares?” test. This document explains how to "ask good questions"

Working in the social sciences means dealing with “fuzzy” concepts such as democracy, power, andnationalism. This document illustrates how to properly define concepts and measures

This document explains why understanding why things happen the way they do is the core goal of political science research. Unfortunately, causation in the social world is much harder to establish than in laboratories. Therefore, we need to develop our ability to understand and detect covariation, spurious relationships, sequencing, and causal mechanisms.

This document constitutes of the main elements of different designs, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Attention to case selection is critical in order to make useful inferences

Learn how to select an appropriate research design and case(s) to answer a research question. Attention to case selection is critical in order to make useful inferences. Simply choosing cases because they are “interesting” can wreak havoc on a researcher’s ability to draw causal inferences or generalize their findings.