This intensive six-week course reviews the essential concepts of Political Science research, giving students practical experience with several research approaches and tools. It has been designed to provide students with the basic tools to identify, analyze, and understand a range of political phenomena. The focus will be on formulating social scientific questions and developing the problem solving skills necessary to address them, including both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Though we will address several concepts associated with statistical methods, this will not be the primary focus of the theoretical or practical components of the course – students need only have basic familiarity with MS Excel (or similar spreadsheet software).
Class time will be evenly balanced between lecture, hands-on application of research methods, and discussion. Since this course covers a lot of ground in a short period of time, your grade will be based on practical homework tasks, in-class exercises, open-book/open-note exams, and your research journal. This will be a very hands-on course, with each class member acting as researcher, subject, and presenter.