leeper/designcourse

Course materials for "Research Design in Political Science"

designcourse's Issues

Changes for 2018/19

• Content
  • Add explicit discussion of "constants can't be causal" in the intro to causality week
  • Add requirement that students attend an LSE research seminar once per term
• Reading list
  • Make sure every week has same structure: method, application, news article
  • News articles should all be claims with or without empirical data
  • Add 1-2 discussion questions for each reading
  • Expand supplemental readings in three sections:
    • methods/theory [remedial and advanced]
    • examples/applications
    • LSE-authored articles as examples ("how LSE contributes to political science")
  • Check gender balance
• Instructions to GTA(s)
  • Add instructions to GTAs for each week's class seminar
  • Add grading rubrics
  • Add GTA meeting schedule

Add example exam ("paper")

The exam has two parts:

1. Answer five of fifteen questions in Part A.
2. Answer one of four questions in Part B.

Changes for 2016/2017

• Learning outcomes
  1. Identify theories, hypotheses, and methods used in empirical political science research.
  2. Apply different methods to political science research questions.
  3. Analyze data to measure concepts, make comparisons, and draw inferences.
  4. Define causation and the multiple ways of reaching causal inferences.
  5. Communicate political science concepts, theories, and methods in writing.
• Clarify timing of readings/lecture/class for each module
• Add activity on literature review to "Theory Development" week
  • Add module on text discovery (possibly with library?)
  • Add a data discovery component to first statistics week
• Introduce quantitative measures more casually and earlier, using R for graphing and measurement first
• Add explicit discussion of "constants can't be causal" in the intro to causality week
• Add 1-2 discussion questions for each reading
• Possible restructuring
  1. Causality
  2. Concepts
  3. Theories
     • Causal graphs (problem set?)
     • Identify theory and method in example articles (problem set)
  4. Mechanisms
  5. Measurement
  6. Applied skills (text, interviewing, observation, something with numbers)
  7. Comparisons
  8. Visualization
  9. Quant/statistics
  10. Experimentation
• Update syllabus readings
  • Make sure every week has same structure: method, application, news article
  • News articles should all be claims with or without empirical data
  • Use primarily LSE-authored articles as examples ("how LSE contributes to political scinece")
  • Expand supplemental readings in two sections (methods/theory [remedial and advanced] and examples/applications)
  • Check gender balance
• Add group activities for methodological weeks
  • Text analysis
  • Interviewing
  • Participant observation
• Updated problem sets
  • First PS is finding claims and identifying evidence for those claims
  • Group project in MT that resembles research design proposal
  • Modify PSs to draw into closer alignment with ST exam questions
  • Add one identifying research design used in a published paper; summarization activity
  • Lit review PS
  • Add something that leverages readings from another course student is currently taking
  • Reflection portion should be with respect to specific learning outcomes
• Online self-assessment quizzes
• Add an MT Week 2 pre-assessment (identifications, inferences from data, strengths and weaknesses of different designs)
• Links to supplemental video and course tutorials
• Instructions to GTAs
  • Add instructions to GTAs for each week's class seminar
  • Add grading rubrics
  • Add GTA meeting schedule
• Add revision schedule for research design proposals (using class time)
• 20-minute mock exam in ST
• Exam structure
  • Identification questions required, shorter in length
  • Two medium-length answers instead of one long answer
    • Critique of a design
    • Proposal of a design

Misc:

• Shadish, Cook, and Campbell reading on "External Validity" uses "mental retardation" in first paragraph; was found offensive.

For LT 2016

• Talk about PS3, especially case selection
• Add instructions to GTAs for each week
• Add discussion questions for each week/reading