Course:
POLS388 Political Data
Analysis (Paradigms and Perestroika)
Semester: Spring 2008
Time:
MW
Room:
Instructor:
Office: Social Work 212
Hours:
T
Description: This course invokes renewed emphasis in the
discipline of Political Science on methodological pluralism. In that spirit, it
introduces students to a variety of different ways in which to gather data in
order to make knowledge claims about politics. Data are construed broadly to
encompass qualitative information as well as quantitative. Methods range from
historical contextualization to experiments, surveys, field studies and even
interpretations of texts and images. The course surveys major methodological
approaches to studying politics with an eye toward enhancing the capacity to
decide when and how such approaches might work best given the subjects under
study. The course starts with the idea that the topic should determine the
methods used rather than the other way around. It ends with consideration of
how triangulation, as in the case of employing multiple methods to study the
same topic, can help strengthen the resulting knowledge claims. A series of exercises
provide opportunities for students to begin to practice different research
methods and to assess their value in the production of political
knowledge. A research design term paper provides the opportunity to
propose a mixed methods study that would contribute to the Political Science
literature on that topic as well as to political discourse more generally.
Texts Available for Purchase at the College Bookstore:
Earl Babbie,
The Basics of Social Research, 3rd Edition (Wadsworth Group, 2005).
Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist
Methods in Social Research (Oxford University Press, 1992).
Course readings other than the texts available at the bookstore can be accessed electronically at the course webpage on Blackboard at: http://blackboard.brynmawr.edu.
Assignments:
Students are required to participate in class discussions on the readings,
complete 5 short research exercises over the course of the semester and submit
a term paper that designs a mixed methods study by the end of the semester.
Term Paper:
By the end of the semester, each student must submit a paper that designs a mixed methods study of an important research topic in Political Science. The paper must demonstrate: the importance of the topic for Political Science and politics, the contribution the study will make to the literature on the topic, the logic of the design, the specific forms of data to be collected, the methods of analysis to be used to examine the data, the advantages of mixing methods of data collection and/or analysis to better understand the particular topic in question, and other issues pertinent to demonstrating that if the study were done it would produce meaningful knowledge about the topic. The paper should be typewritten, 10-12 pages double-spaced in 12-point font, with an additional title page and abstract. Students should make appointments with the instructor to develop their topics and elaborate their research designs.
Evaluation:
Students’ performance in the course will be evaluated as follows:
Class participation 20%
5 Data Exercises 50% (10% each)
Term Paper 25%
Class presentation 5%
TOTAL 100%
Course Outline:
PART I: General Themes
Week 1:
First Session: Introduction
Second Session: Paradigms and Perestroika: Methodological Pluralism in Political Science Today
D.W.
Miller, “Storming the Palace in Political Science: Scholars Join Revolt Against the Domination of Mathematical Approaches to the
Discipline,” Chronicle of Higher Education,
Sanford
F. Schram, “Political Science Research: From Theory to Practice,” International Encyclopedia of Political
Science, George T. Kurian, ed. (
Ian Shapiro, “Problems, Methods, and Theories in the Study of Politics, or What's Wrong with Political Science and What to Do about It,” Political Theory, 30 (August 2002): 596-619. Click here.
Week 2:
First Session: Structuring Research from a Positivist Perspective of Explaining Causality
Babbie, Chapters 1-3.
Robert A. Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review 97, 3 (August 2003): 343-361. Click here.
James D. Fearon, “Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science,” World Politics, 43 (January 1991): 169-195. Click here.
Second Session: Structuring Positivist Research (continued)
Babbie, Chapters 4-6.
Barbara Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955,” American Political Science Review 97, 1 (February 2003): 57-73. Click here.
Week 3:
First Session: Structuring Qualitative Research from an Interpretivist Perspective of Understanding Meaning
Babbie, Chapter 10.
Reinharz, Chapter 1-2.
Jonathan
Lieberson, “The Silent Majority,”
Second Session: Intepretivist
Research (continued)
Ann Chih Lin, “Bridging Positivist and Interpretivist Approaches to Qualitative Methods,” Policy Studies Journal 26, 1 (1998): 162-80. Click here.
Todd Jick, “Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: Triangulation in Action,” Administrative Science Quarterly 24, 4 (1979): 602-11. Click here.
PART II: Data Collection and Analysis Exemplified
Week 4:
First Session: Predicting Political Behavior through Survey Research (Distinguishing Surveys from Experiments)
Babbie, Chapter 9.
Reinharz, Chapter 4.
Second Session: Examples of
Surveys (that are Like Experiments)
Donald Kinder and Nicholas Winter, “Exploring the Racial Divide: Blacks, Whites and Opinion on National Policy,” American Journal of Political Science 45, 2 (April, 2001): 439-56. Click here.
Mark
Peffley, Mac Avery, and Jason Glass, “Race
Matters: The Impact of News Coverage of Welfare Reform on Public
Opinion,” Race, Welfare, and the Politics of Reform,
Week 5:
First Session: In-Class Data Analysis on Quantitative Survey Data
UC-Berkeley Social Science Data Archive
UMich ICPSR SETUPS on Voting Behavior
US Census Bureau's Current Population Survey
Second Session: In-Class Data
Analysis on Quantitative Survey Data (continued)
Week 6:
First Session: Predicting Political Behavior through Experimental Research
Babbie, Chapter 8.
Reinharz, Chapter 5.
Edward Schatz and Irwin J. Schatz, “Medicine and Political Science: Parallel Lessons in Methodological Excess,” PS: Political Science & Politics 36, 3 (July 2003): 417-422. Click here.
Second Session: Experimental Research Exemplified
Tali Mendelberg, “Executing Hortons:
Racial Crime in the 1988 Presidential Campaign,” Public Opinion
Quarterly 61, 1 (1997): 134-57. Click here.
Devah
Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” The American Journal of
Sociology 108, 5 (March 2003): 937-76. Click here.
Sanford
F. Schram, Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Linda Houser, “Deciding to
Discipline: A Multi-Method Study of
Race, Choice, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform” (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan, National Poverty Center, Working Paper #07-33,
November 2007). Click here.
Week 7:
First Session: Quasi-Experimental
Analysis Exemplified (Using Survey Data)
Joe
Soss and Sanford F. Schram, “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform and
Policy Feedback,” American Political Science Review, 101, 1
(February 2007): 111-27. Click here.
A Senior Thesis Example. Click here. Click here.
Second Session: Unobtrusive Measurement
Babbie, Chapter 11.
Reinharz,
Chapter 8.
Kiku Adatto, “The Incredible Shrinking Sound Bite,” The
New Republic,
Week 8:
First Session: Unobtrusive Measurement Exemplified: Content Analysis
Lisa
D. Brush, “Worthy Widows, Welfare Cheats; Proper Womanhood in Expert
Needs Talk about Single Mothers in the
Second Session: Mixing Methods Once Again: The Case of Content Analysis and a Survey with an Experimental Design
A Senior Thesis Example. Click here.
Click here.
Week 9:
First Session: Interpretive Analysis and Field Studies: The Case of Ethnography
Reinharz, Chapter 3, 7.
Lorraine Bayard de Volo and Edward Schatz, “From the Inside Out: Ethnographic Methods in Political Research,” PS: Political Science & Politics 37, 2 (April 2004): 417-422. Click here.
Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, “Engaging Subjective Knowledge: How Amar Singh’s Diary Narratives of and by the Self Explain Identity Formation,” Perspectives on Politics 1, 4 (December 2003): 681-694. Click here.
Second Session: Field Research: Going In-depth, Interviewing and Participant Observation
Joe
Soss, “Talking Our Way to Meaningful Explanations: A Practice-Centered
View of Interviewing for Interpretive Research.,“
in Dvora Yanow and
Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, eds., Interpretation and
Method (
Howard S. Becker, “Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant Observation,” American Sociological Review 23 (1958): 652-660. Click here.
Richard
F. Fenno, Jr., “The Political Scientist as
Participant Observer,” Watching Politicians: Essays on Participant
Observation (Berkeley: Institute for Governmental Studies, 1990), pp.
55-94. Click here.
Week 10:
First Session: Making the Exotic
Ralph
Huitt, “The Outsider in the Senate: An
Alternative Role,” American Political Science Review 55 (1961):
566-75. Click here.
Mary Hawkesworth, “Congressional Enactments of Race–Gender: Toward a Theory of Raced–Gendered Institutions,” American Political Science Review 97, 4 (November 2003): 529-550. Click here.
Second Session: Understanding
the Other as Other: Political Ethnography Exemplified
Lisa
Wedeen, “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities
for Political Science,” American Political Science Review 96, 4
(December 2002): 713-28. Click here.
Michael N. Barnett, “The UN Security Council, Indifference, and Genocide in Rwanda.” Cultural Anthropology. 12, 4 (1997): 551-78. Click here.
Week 11:
First Session: Historical-Institutionalism
Theda Skocpol, “Why I am a Historical-Institutionalist,” Polity 28 (Fall 1995): 103-6. Click here.
Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, “The Uses of Comparative
History in Macrosocial Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 22 (2) (1980): 174-97. Click here.
Ellen
M. Immergut, “The Roles of the Game: The Logic of Health Policy-making in
Craig Calhoun, “The Rise and Domestication of Historical Sociology,” The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, Essays on Transformations in the Disciplines. Ed. T. MacDonald. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 305-338. Click here.
Second Session: The Logic of Case Studies
Reinharz, Chapter 9.
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 1-52. Click here.
David Laitin, “Book Review--Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30, 1 (1999): 177-179. Click here.
Week 12:
First Session: Examining Discursive Practices: Deconstruction and its Others
Martha S. Feldman, Strategies for Interpreting Qualitative Data (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), Selections. Click here.
Second Session: Discourse Analysis Applied
Thomas
Ricento, “The Discursive Construction of
Americanism,” Discourse &Society 14, 5 (2003):611-617. Click
here.
Jennifer
Milliken, “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique
of Research and Methods,” European Journal of International Relations 5,
2 (1999): 225-54. Click here.
Week 13:
First Session: Diagnosing Visual Culture: The Case of Picture Theory
W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 35-82. Click here.
Second Session: Exemplifying the Analysis of Imagery in Politics
Timothy
Kaufman-Osborn, “Gender Trouble at Abu Ghraib?”
Politics & Gender, forthcoming. Click here.
Wahneema Lubiano, “Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means,” Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, Toni Morrison, ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1992), pp. 323-64. Click here.
Week 14: Class Presentations
Term Paper due Last Day of Finals Week