PS 372

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PS 372

• Introduction

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Practical Application

• 1.) As citizens in the US you are often called
  upon to evaluate empirical research and
  theoretical arguments about political phenomena.
  (Debates on Abortion / Death Penalty Election
  Polls in US Events in other parts of the world)
• 2.) As students you are often required to acquire
  scientific knowledge yourself. (term papers for
  undergraduate courses research proposals for
  upper-level seminars research projects for most,
  if not all, graduate programs.
• 3.) Useful skills that build a resume for future
  jobs.

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DETAILS FOR Job 05054--LHP
Job Title Research Assistant (R01)Status Regular, Full-timeCenter Labor and Social PolicyReports To Center Director
JOB SUMMARY
Research assistants will assist senior researchers with quantitative research projects related to welfare policy, poverty, employment, and/or immigration. Responsibilities include compiling and analyzing data sets (using SAS and/or Stata), running regression analyses and generating output tables, conducting literature searches and reviews, and helping with other steps in the research process.
EXPERIENCE
Requires excellent quantitative skills with experience in Stata, SAS, or similar statistical analysis package. Prior research experience preferred. This position requires detail-oriented, self-motivated individual who can work independently as well as part of a team.
EDUCATION
BA/BS in a social science preferred.


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Subfields in Political Science

• American Politics
• Political Institutions
• Behavior
• Comparative Politics
• - European Politics
• - African Politics
• International Relations
• IPE
• International Conflict/Security
• Political Theory
• Public Administration/Policy

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History of Political Science

• Traditional
• Historical, Legalism, Philosophy, Descriptive
• Modern Behavioralism
• Political science as science
• Facilitated by development of technology,
  computers

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Card Reader (1960s-70s)
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Tape Unit (1960s-70s)
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Methods of Knowing

• Ordinary Human Inquiry / Intuition
• Tradition
• Authority
• All Subjective
• Science can be seen as an attempt to overcome the
  flaws of these alternatives (Objective)

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Science

• Effort to understand the world (explain various
  phenomena) by systematically examining causal
  relationships among variables
• Scientific explanation must have both logical and
  empirical support

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Who Uses Science?

• Natural sciences Biology, Chemistry, Physics,
  Astronomy, etc.
• Social sciences Psychology, Sociology,
  Economics, Criminology, Anthropology, Political
  Science

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3 Criticisms of Social Science

• Absence of universal laws in social world
• Deterministic vs. Probabilistic relationships
• Social science research tends to test the obvious
• Questions irrelevant /arcane

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Important Research??
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Is Political Science Arcane?
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The Business of Social Research

• Where universities (teaching vs. research
  universities), research institutes, government
• Who people with Ph.D.s (with help from
  graduate students at universities)
• Outlets for research conferences, journals,
  books

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The Business of Social Research

• Grants
• NSF
• Research Foundations
• Government Institutions / Organizations

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PS Journals

• Discipline-wide American Political Science
  Review, Journal of Politics, American Journal of
  Political Science
• Many specialized journals for different fields
• American Politics - American Politics Quarterly,
  State Politics and Policy Quarterly
• Comparative Politics - African Affairs, European
  Journal of Political Research
• International Relations - Journal of Conflict
  Management and Peace Science, International
  Organization

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The Scientific Process

• Scientific process differs from other forms of
  knowing in that it is based on well defined
  principles for collecting, analyzing, and
  evaluating information. Two paths to the
  scientific process
• Inductive vs Deductive Reasoning

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The Scientific Process

• Inductive Explanation
• The process of reasoning from specific
  observation to general theory
• Deductive Explanation
• The process of reasoning from general theory to
  specific observation

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• 1. Which of the following claims would be best
  expressed by inductive reasoning?
• Your first quiz grade usually indicates how you
  will do in the course.
• The final exam accounts for 30 of the course
  grade.
• Late papers will not be accepted.
• Political Science Research Methods is required
  reading in your course.

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• Which of the following claims would be best
  expressed by deductive reasoning?
• Kentucky's population growth rate slowed last
  year.
• Kentucky residents appreciate their good weather.
• Kentucky residents are residents of the United
  States.
• More cars are registered in Kentucky than in any
  other state.

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The Scientific ProcessThe Scientific Method

• Research Question
• Theory and Hypotheses
• Research Design
• Operationalization (measurement)
• Empirical Observation and Analysis

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Empirical Verification
• a statement must be proved true by means of
  actual objective observation of phenomena

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Normative vs. non-normative
• normative value-laden, evaluative, ought or
  should, prescriptive
• Non-normative factual, objective
• - Scientific Knowledge is value-free, what might
  be in the future and why and typically does not
  address whether something is good or bad

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Transmissible
• Methods utilized must be explicitly detailed so
  others can analyze and replicate the findings
• Why?
• Test conclusions
• Eliminate Bias

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Falsifiable
• - A key and crucial aspect of science that
  separates it from other forms of knowledge
• - The assertions (hypotheses) can, in principle,
  be rejected in the of contravening empirical
  evidence
• -

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Champions until defeated / Cumulative
• Standing on the shoulders of giants
• Both in terms of substantive findings and
  research methods

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Explanatory
• Answers why and how kinds of questions
• Provides a systematic, empirically verified
  understanding of why a phenomenon occurs.
• A conclusion can be logically and empirically
  derived from a set of general principles and
  specific starting conditions.
• In other words, when things of type X occur, they
  will be followed by things of type Y.

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Parsimonious All things being equal, the
  simplest explanation is the best.
• Ockhams Razor

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Deals with the Scientific Evaluation of Dependent
  and Independent Variables
• Dependent (Y)
• Independent (X)
• Control (X)

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Causal Relationship
• X causes Y (not coincidence)
• Example fire trucks and fire, fertilizer causes
  plant growth
• Correlation Relationship (Probabilistic
  Explanation)
• - X is correlated with Y (we think its causal
  but cannot be certain)
• - Example Higher Levels of Economic
  Development lead to Democratization

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Spuriousness

• When we believe a phenomena (the dependent
  variable Y) is caused by a particular influence
  (the independent variable X) but it is in fact
  caused by a third variable that correlates with
  both.
• 1.)X ? Y
• 2.)X??Y
• 3.)X??Y
• Z

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Why Correlation and Not Causation in Social
Science?

• Most of the time we cannot conduct completely
  controlled experiments.
• Often we do not have enough observations to
  definitively guarantee Causation.
• Dealing with the vast variability of human choice
  and action (Rational Choice and Neurology as
  alternatives)

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Generalizable
• - Applicable to many rather than just a few
  cases.
• Empirical Generalization summarizes the
  relationship between two individual facts.

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Distinguishing Characteristics of Scientific
Knowledge

• Validity
• External Validity We say that a study has
  external validity when it can be generalized from
  the specific experiment to the world as a whole.
  External validity is about generalizabilty. We
  want to be able to generalize our findings beyond
  specific individual cases.
• Internal Validity - We say that a study has
  internal validity when it not only has reliable
  measures of independent and dependent variables
  BUT also a strong justification that causally
  links the independent variables to the dependent
  variables. At the same time, you are able to rule
  out extraneous (control) variables, or
  alternative, often unanticipated, causes for your
  dependent variables. Thus strong internal
  validity refers to the unambiguous assignment of
  causes to effects. Internal validity is about
  causal control.

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Important Note

• Commonsense knowledge, casual observation, and
  superstition can be valid and true but they are
  not scientific if they are not empirically
  verified.