Additional summary research methods

POLITICAL RESEARCH – Methods and practical skills
1. Political Research
 Authors’ approach to pol research consists of 3 basic positions
o 1. Encourage pluralism in methodological approaches to pol researchers
o 2. Believe that research should be problem-driven
o 3. Believe research should be relevance to important pol questions and policy issues

Issues in political research

 Significant question
o = directly relevant to solving real-world problems and furthering the goals of a specific
scientific literature
o All questions should help to generate valid and reliable knowledge about the
questions they address

Politics and IR

 Researchers have increasingly come to appreciate the extent to which pol processes
operate across levels or at multiple scales

 Sub field of pol research
o Political theory
o Public policy
o Public administration
o Public law

Empirical vs normative research

 Empirical research
o Addresses events and pol phenomena that we observe in the real world
o Questions about what is

 Normative research
o Addresses questions about what should or ought to be

 John Gerring and Joshua Yesnowitz
o Argue that empirical study of social phenomena is meaningless if it has no normative
import and it is misleading if its normative content is left ambiguous

 In sum
o good social science is both empirically grounded and relevant to human concerns
o normative theorizing must deal in facts and empirical work must deal in values

Positivism vs interpretivism

, Ontology
o the essence of being – i.e. what is the object that is being studied
o what we can know about the world

 Epistemology
o how do we know what is to be known – i.e. what kind of evidence do we need?
o how we can know it

 Positivism
o empirical observation is key!
o Scientific knowledge of the social world is limited to what can be observed and that we
can explain and predict social phenomena by discovering empirical regularities,
formulating law like generalizations, and establishing causal relationships

 Interpretivism
o Maintains that knowledge of the social world can be gained through interpreting the
meanings which give people reasons for acting, understand human behavior, but we
cannot explain or predict it on the basis of law-like generalizations and establishing the
existence causal relationship

 Positivism and interpretivism have different ontological and epistemological
commitments
o However, researchers working in both traditions generally follow the same
methodological conventions

 Realist = foundationalist

 Constructivist = anti foundationalist

 Foundationalist
o = all truth claims can be judged objectively true of false

 Anti- foundationalist
o = argument that there are never neutral grounds for asserting what is true in any time/
space

 Realism
o real world exists independently of our knowledge of it and can be discovered as such if
we use the right methods in the right way

 Constructivism
o world is socially constructed and can be interpreted in diff ways
o crucial: idea of double hermeneutic

 idea of double hermeneutic
o there are 2 levels of ‘understanding’
 the world is interpreted by the actors (one hermeneutic level)

,  and their interpretation is interpreted by the observer (second hermeneutic level)
o for researchers: aim explore own interpretation of interpretations made by actors
about their behavior

 Behavioural and rational choice approaches: positivist position (p10)
 Psychologists lean towards positivism
 Feminism: many constructivist position, some positivists
 Poststructuralists see epistemology as prior to ontology
 Marxists: critical realist position

 Researchers share similar goals

Quantitative vs qualitative research

 Quantitative research
o Based on statistical analysis of carefully coded information for many cases or
observations

 Qualitative research
o Tends to be based on the discursive analysis of more loosely coded information for
just a few cases
o Some… p. 6
o Others… p.6

 Gary King, Robert Keohane, Sidney Verba: began an important debate about
methodology

The research process

Part 1: Philosophy of social science

 Methodology refers to the conduct of inquiry

 Ontology, Epistemology

 In sum: understanding the terms of the major debates in the philosophy of social
science, and sensitivity to their implications, is an important part of producing good
research

 3 approaches
o Positivism
o Interpretivism
o Scientific realism

 3 tenets positivism
o 1. Scientific methods may be applied to the study of social life
o 2. Empiricism: Knowledge is only generated through observation

, o 3. Facts and values are distinct, thus making objective inquiry possible

 Interpretivism

 Scientific realism
o Knowledge is not limited to what can be observed but also includes theoretical
entities

 Critics to positivism argue that knowledge produced by social-scientific research is not
value-neutral, but is shaped by a variety of factors, including existing scientific theory,
politics, and power relations, cultural values

Part 2: How to do research

 A research question is one that
o 1. Has significance for a topic or issue relating to the subject matter of our field
o 2. Is researchable
o 3. Has not yet been answered definitively

 To formulate a research question you need to be clear about what you want to know

 The research process is often circuitous

 Dust of detail (learning more about the specific facts of the case or question or issue, or
observations of other scholars that we treat as facts)

 In sum: the research process consists of a set of components or series of steps but, in
practice, the process of research does not unfold in the sort of linear fashion that it
suggests

 Descriptive questions
o Will describe the characteristics of something

 Explanatory questions
o Explain what factors or conditions are causally connected to a know outcome

 Normative questions
o How something should be

 Working hypothesis
o An operational hunch about what you expect to find

 Hypothesis
o = a reasoned, clearly specified hunch or expectation w which you begin your research
and which helps guide and focus your research
o Can be tested in 2 ways (evidence or operate as a guide to a process of discovery)