RESEARCH DESIGN: SCOPE AND METHODS

This class aims to provide students with the tools to conduct social science research and analyze data. We will talk about how to summarize and present data, analyze experiments and quasi- 
experimental designs, conduct public opinion surveys, and discuss other related topics.  This is a course in political science, so there will be greater emphasis on examples in politics.  
However,    our primary goal is to learn how to use methods to answer a broad variety of interesting research questions in the social sciences and engage with different research designs.

Many of the required readings will be technical in  nature,  using  mathematical  and  statistical methods to present and discuss data. However, this class does not assume any background in 
statistics or advanced math.  When we discuss readings with technical material, the focus will be on extracting the “big takeaways" and using statistical methods in a practical  setting.