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IPRES: Summary of assigned readings for midterm/part 1 (Introduction to Political Science Research)
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Summary of all the assigned readings for IPRES part 1.
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Introduction to Political Science Research - NotesWeek 1: theory, questions, and design
Chapter 1
● Generates fresh insights that expand, extend, and refine our knowledge.
● Issues in political research
- A significant question is one that is directly relevant to solving real-world
problems and to furthering the goals of specific scientific literature.
- Empirical research addresses events and political phenomena that we observe
in the real world
- Normative/theoretical research addresses ideas and thought and questions
about what should or ought to be.
- The justification for why a research question is interesting or relevant or
meaningful is essentially a normative one.
- Theory and evidence inform each other -> seeing either one as entirely
divorced from the other generates either fantasy or mindless empiricism
- Normative research wants to convince others by means of drawing logical
inferences and presenting the logical development of their ideas.
- An empirical researcher may use theory in order to try to understand or
explain, whereas a normative researcher may use theory to challenge political
reality
- Positivism maintains that scientific knowledge of the social world is limited to
what can be observed: and that we can explain and predict social phenomena
by discovering empirical regularities
- Interpretivism maintains that knowledge of the social world can be gained
through interpreting the meaning which give people reasons for acting and that
we can, in this way, understand human behavior, but we cannot explain or
predict it on the basis of law-like generalizations and establishing the
existence of casual relationships.
- Quantitative research tends to be based on statistical analysis
- Qualitative research tends to be based on the discursive analysis of more
loosely coded information for just a few cases.
● The research process
- 1) Key issues in the philosophy of social science, 2) the “how-to” of research,
3) the specific methodological procedures and techniques utilized in carrying
out a given research project.
Philosophy of social science: knowledge and knowing in social science research
● Questions of ontology and epistemology - question about the complexities and
ambiguities of knowing and gaining knowledge of the social world.
● Methodology - conduct of inquiry
● What is reality? It is constantly being defined by us
, ● Approaches
- Positivism: 1) scientific methods may be applied to the study of social life, 2)
knowledge is only generated through observation (empiricism), 3) facts and
values are distinct, making objective inquiry possible → critics say it is not
objective but influenced by politics, power relations, culture, etc
- Interpretivism: maintains that the social world is fundamentally different from
the world of natural phenomena and that it does not exist independently of our
interpretation of it.
- Scientific realism: maintains that knowledge is not limited to what can be
observed but also includes theoretical entities (observable elements of social
life)
● What is the social world? What level of description (the individual or the collective) is
necessary for the explanation of social phenomena?
- Individualism: argues that individuals are the basic units of society and that
social life must be explained in terms of actions of individuals
- Holism: treats “social wholes” as the basic unit of analysis
How to do research: an overview
● Developing a researchable question, locating applicable theory and literature,
formulating a testable hypothesis, clarifying concepts, and developing empirical
indicators.
● For all research, it can be useful to formulate a working hypothesis - an operational
hunch about what you expect to find. Initially, what argument motivates the research?
What findings might be expected? Who cares? → hypotheses can either be tested with
evidence (confirmatory research) or operate as a guide to a process of discovery
(exploratory research)
How to do research in practice
● Experiments, comparative research, surveys, interviews or focus groups, participation
for analysis, analyzing policy documents etc
● It is frequently asserted that quantitative research may be good at making
generalizations but is a blunt instrument for investigating hard-to-define concepts. By
contrast, one of the key strengths of qualitative research is often thought to be its
ability to investigate these hard-to-define concepts
● It is often said that quantitative methods are too blunt and reduce the complicated
concepts down to numbers which can never capture the full meaning of what is being
investigated.
● The experimental approach is widely considered to be the most of scientific research
design → laboratory experiments, field experiments, natural experiments etc
● The comparative method
- Large- N studies (the analysis of many cases)
- small-N studies (the analysis of a small number of cases, 2,3,4)
- Single-N studies (case studies)
● Surveys
, - Measurement error
- Sampling error
● Interviews and focus groups (understandings peoples perceptions)
● Participant observation (data collection is carried out in real life, observing the true
sense of what people think and do)
Chapter 2: Forms of knowledge: Laws, Explanation, and Interpretation in the study of
the social world
● Each approach in this chapter informs a different set of research practices because
each sequentially differs in its conception of the nature, of the social world
(ontology), of what sort of knowledge it is possible for us to acquire about this world
(epistemology), and how we go about acquiring this knowledge (methodology)
● Ontology: what is?
● Epistemology: what is knowable?
● Methodology: how to obtain knowledge?
● Both realism and positivism claim that the social world is no different than the natural
world and so can be studied the same way as scientists study the natural world
Positivism
● Starting in the 50s and 60s with the Behavioral Revolution (studying political
behaviour), claimed that only the observable may be studied.
● Post-behavioral revolution → new directions of behaviourism
● Rational choice theory/positive political theory
- Assumes that what motivates behaviour is rational self-interest as opposed to
● Emphasis on that it is replicable for others
● Classical positivism
- Comte: positive stage in which the search for truth is characterised by the
systematic collection of observed facts (social world can be explained using
the same methods as those used to explain natural phenomena)
- Goal is to establish cause-effect relationship → what we can only know what
we can observe, therefore, we can not observe the underlying generative force
that makes this happen → therefore only observable regularirites (constant
conjunction) → all we can do is observe that one thing follow another rather
than studying causal mechanisms
- Four basic tenets:
1. Naturalism (claim that there are no fundamental differences between
the natural and the social sciences. Presupposes and ontological claim
about the world. )
2. Empiricism (answers the epistemological question: what we know of
the world is limited to what can be observed. Knowledge is only that
which generates in sensory experience)
3. Predicit by means of law (goal of social science is to predict social
phenomena by laws - “law-like generalisations”) →Induction (how
we discover laws of social life. Begin with specific observations and
, measures - gathering facts. Then move on to identifying patterns and
regularities and then develop general conlucsions and theories)
4. It is possible to distinguish between facts and values (it is possible
to treat facts as independent of the observer and his/her values → we
can gain value free and objective knowledge)
● Empiricism and logic as basis of truth claims
- Two key critiques that have been offered by positivists
1. Logical positivism (early 20th century): argue that logical reasoning
and mathematics should also be treated as a source of knowledge (not
only the observable - not only empiricism but also logic reasoning) →
in addition to induction they
also employ deduction.
Deduction begins with broad
generalisation or theoretical
propositions and then moves
to specific observation (does not start with observation). The term
retroduction describes the interaction of induction and deduction in an
evolving dynamic process of discovery and hypothesis formation (mix
of them). Logical positivism also contributed to establishing
verification (statement of propositions) as the criterion for establishing
truth and a clear division between science and metaphysics → critique
by Karl Popper
2. Karl Popper and his critique of logical positivism: rejects induction as
a method of reasoning. Based on Hume who points out that we can not
reach general statements of scientific law on the basis of experiences.
Hume argued that since we cannot observe the universe at all times and
in all place, we are not justified in deducing general laws based on
inductive evidence (black swan story) → Popper proposes to that to
establish truth claims we should in fact do the reverse of what logical
positivists propose: rather than attempting to verify a theory, scientist
should attempt to disprove it (aim is to falsify the hypothesis =
falsifiability rather than verifiability). Anything too falsifiable is
outside of science (religion) → theories cannot be derived from
observation (induction) because at any time a single observation can
discontinue the theory = must be done through deduction → how to
find law of the social world through deduction? Hempel: to explain
some event is to cite some law or laws and other conditions from
which the event can be deduced = Deductive-nomological model →
something is explained when it is shown to be a member of a more
general class of things, when it is deduced from a general law. → but
how be sure that a law is a law? = Hypothetico-deductive model of
confirmation → we confirm that the generalisation is a law by treating
it as a hypothesis and then test it in a sufficient number of explicit
predictions of further phenomena.
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