Political Science

Introduction to Political Science Research Methods, is an Open Education Resource Textbook that surveys the research methods employed in political science. The textbook includes chapters that cover: history and development of the empirical study of politics; the scientific method; theories, hypotheses, variables, and units; conceptualization, operationalization and measurement of political concepts; elements of research design including the logic of sampling; qualitative and quantitative research methods and means of analysis; and research ethics.

This comprehensive text is designed to help political science students learn what to research, why to research, and how to research. It integrates both the quantitative and qualitative approaches to research, including the most detailed coverage of qualitative methods currently available. The book provides specific instructions in the use of available statistical software programs such as Excel and SPSS. It covers such important topics as research design, specifying research problems, designing questionnaires and writing questions, designing and carrying out qualitative research, and analyzing both quantitative and qualitative research data.

Drawing together international experts on research methods in International Relations (IR), this Handbook answers the complex practical questions for those approaching a new research topic for the first time. Empirical chapters are split into five distinct parts guiding the reader through the research process, covering the key topics including scope and methods, concepts, data and techniques and tools and applications.

This book, the first of its kind in political science, reconsiders the design and execution of field research and explores its role in producing knowledge. First, it offers an empirical overview of fieldwork in the discipline based on a large-scale survey and extensive interviews. Good fieldwork takes diverse forms yet follows a set of common practices and principles. Second, the book demonstrates the analytic benefits of fieldwork, showing how it contributes to our understanding of politics. Finally, it provides intellectual and practical guidance, with chapters on preparing for field research, operating in the field and making analytic progress while collecting data, and on data collection techniques including archival research, interviewing, ethnography and participant observation, surveys, and field experiments.

Known as a field of quantitative measurement and theoretical debate, political science is also a field where researchers draw increasingly on in-person fieldwork. This book presents a collection of 35 field research stories from scholars of political science from a range of subfields, ranks, and specializations in a readable and relatable guidebook for fieldwork in political science.

A vital resource for graduate students in political science that provides discipline-specific training in selecting interviewees, conducting interviews, and using the data thus collected.

This book explores the application of new designs; the introduction of novel data sources, measurement approaches, and statistical methods; the use of experiments in more areas; and discipline-wide discussions about the robustness, generalizability, and ethics of experiments in political science. The volume explores these new opportunities while also highlighting the concomitant challenges. The goal is to help scholars and practitioners conduct high-quality experiments that make important contributions to knowledge.

Tension has long existed in the social sciences between quantitative and qualitative approaches on one hand, and theory-minded and empirical techniques on the other. This book works to address this disconnect by establishing a framework for methodological unification: empirical implications of theoretical models (EITM). This framework connects behavioural and applied statistical concepts, develops analogues of these concepts, and links and evaluates these analogues. The authors offer detailed explanations of how these concepts may be framed, to assist researchers interested in incorporating EITM into their own research. They go on to demonstrate how EITM may be put into practice for a range of disciplines within the social sciences, including voting, party identification, social interaction, learning, conflict and cooperation to macro-policy formulation.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and issues of contemporary political philosophy, providing an essential reference work for scholars and advanced students. It is structured in three parts, covering methodological issues; tools and argumentative strategies employed by political philosophy; and concepts and topics key to the discipline. Expert authors from around the world have written twenty chapters in a consistent and engaging style. Each chapter is thoroughly cross-referenced allowing students to appreciate how methodological issues relate to each other, and how methodology and argumentative tools affect the way substantial issues are addressed.

This is the first book to explain how to use key methods in analytical political theory. The methods discussed include contractualism, reflective equilibrium, positive political theory, thought experiments and ideological analysis. Each chapter explains what kinds of problems in political theory might require researchers to use a particular method, the basic principles behind the method being proposed, and an analysis of how to apply it, including concrete principles of good practice.

An Introduction to Political and Social Data Analysis (With R) provides students with an accessible overview of practical data analysis while also providing a gentle introduction to the R programming environment. Author Thomas M. Holbrook patiently explains each step in statistical analysis with R, avoiding complicated tools or packages.