PLSC 500Research Methods&Statistics(I)

Catalog

This course is a foundation course in our graduate program. While the American, Comparative, and World politics core seminars are designed to inform aspiring professional political scientists about what political scientists think they know and what burning questions are on the discipline's agenda, PLSC 500 focuses on how we know what we think we know and how we can come to know what we still need to know. The course perspective is decidedly empiricist. It covers an introduction to epistemology, with an emphasis on the scientific method, followed by the fundamentals of research design and an introduction to descriptive and inferential statistics. The format is lecture style supplemented by questions frequently put to students. Grading will be based on regular homework assignments, a midterm exam, a final exam, and a research design paper.