Research Methods

Catalog description

This course examines how to study and think about policy and politics scientifically and in methodologically useful ways. Students learn how to identify research questions about the political world, generate meaningful measurements of the concepts being studied, create a research design for collecting data (i.e. evidence), construct testable hypotheses, conduct the necessary statistical analysis to test the hypotheses, interpret the results of the statistical analysis, and apply these results to the original theory of inquiry in a meaningful way.