Political Science 495 Fall 2019
T/R 2:00 – 3:20 p.m. 310 David Kinley Hall
Prof. Matthew S. Winters [email protected] Office: 315 David Kinley Hall Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.,
or by appointment
Senior Honors Seminar
Course Description
This course is part of the Department of Political Science Honors Program. The course provides an advanced overview of issues in political science research, especially the identification of research questions and the design of research strategies appropriate for a senior thesis. The course requires completion of a substantial research proposal, which will guide work on and become part of the final senior honors thesis to be completed during the spring semester.
During the course, we will move step-by-step through the process of formulating a research question, framing original research with respect to extant literature, justifying a theoretical answer to a research question, developing a research design for seeing whether empirical evidence supports the proposed answer, and conducting and reporting analyses.
Course Goals
The main goal for this course is for students to produce a thesis prospectus that will guide spring semester activities that will lead to a completed honors thesis at the end of the academic year.
As part of this process, students should…
- Develop an understanding of what types of questions make for good social science research questions;
- Improve their ability to locate, read, synthesize, and critique existing scholarly literature; - Become more adept at using theoretical assumptions to produce testable hypotheses; - Deepen critical abilities related to the operationalization and measurement of concepts; - Become aware of the variety of empirical techniques used in social science research and
develop opinions about their relative strengths and weaknesses;
- Identify the norms used in political science writing and be able to replicate them; and - Improve presentational skills.
Course Materials
There is one required textbook for the class:
Dawn Brancati. 2018. Social Scientific Research. Washington, D.C.: Sage.
Additional required readings will be provided on the Compass website for the class (http://compass2g.illinois.edu).
The chief copy editor at Random House has recently published Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. It is written in an entertaining fashion and yet still provides, at the end of the day, a useful set of rules to which you can adhere in your writing.
Course Requirements and Grading
Unless otherwise indicated, the description and due date can be found in the course schedule below.
1. Class Attendance and Participation 100 points
Although everyone will be writing individual theses, peer feedback on the projects is crucial for their development. In addition, collective engagement with existing research will help all students in the course better understand the social science research process.
2. Assessment of Research Talk 30 points
Research presentations occur in the Department of Political Science on most Mondays and Fridays. The schedule is available on the Department’s website. You are to attend a talk, and write and hand in a brief report that includes a summary of the talk and, most importantly, an assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. The objective is for you to improve your understanding of professional academic research presentations so that you can deliver high quality presentations of your own both this semester and next year. You may submit your paper at any point during the semester up to Friday 15 November. Your paper should be approximately 3-5 pages in length.
3. Research Question (initial; revised; presentation – 10 points each) 30 points
4. Contract with Adviser 5 points
5. Interview with Adviser 10 points
6. Bibliography Exercise 5 points
7. Introduction, Literature Review, and Theory Draft 50 points
8. Revised Theory Section 30 points
9. Research Design First Draft 50 points
10. Oral Presentation of Prospectus 40 points
11. Final prospectus 150 points
TOTAL 500 points
Students typically will submit assignments through Compass.
Assignment of Final Grades: The instructor will assign final letter grades according to the following scale with rounding from the second decimal place after the number of earned points is divided by the 500 available points:
A+ 97-100 B+ 87-89 C+ 77-79 D+ 67-69 F <60
A 93-96 B 83-86 C 73-76 D 63-66
A- 90-92 B- 80-82 C- 70-72 D- 60-62
Late Assignments: The instructor expects students to complete assignments by the dates specified on the syllabus. If a student anticipates being unable to complete an assignment on time, the student should contact the instructor in advance of the assignment due date. If students experience a personal emergency that prevents them from handing in an assignment on time, students may consult with the Student Assistance Center (http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/studentAssistance/index.asp) about obtaining a letter explaining their absence from campus. Part 5 of Article 1 of the Student Code of Conduct (http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/studentAssistance/absence/revised_code.asp) details the specific circumstances under which seeking a letter of absence is appropriate.
Academic Honesty: The work that you submit in this class must be your own. Unless an assignment is explicitly designed to be collaborative, you are expected to work independently of other students. (Consulting with other students, your adviser, and other faculty members about the thesis is, of course, allowed.) When you make use of external sources, you are required to cite them. When in doubt about whether a citation is necessary or not, provide a citation. As described in Part 4 of Article 1 of the Student Code of Conduct (http://studentcode.illinois.edu/article1_part4_1-401.html), consequences for plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty can include zero points on an assignment, failure for the course or dismissal from the university.
Spring Semester: Students who successfully complete PS495 in the fall semester will register for three credits of PS496 in the spring semester with their faculty adviser. The Department of Political Science advising office will assist you in this process. When the thesis is completed and approved at the end of the spring semester, your faculty advisor will assign you a grade for PS496. The PS495 instructor is not involved in spring semester grading.
Students are required to submit proposals to the University of Illinois Undergraduate Research Symposium, which is typically held in April; the submission deadline is typically in early February. Students are also required to present their work at a poster session during the Political Science honors and awards reception, also typically held in April. The Department provides cash prizes for the best poster and the best completed thesis. Students may also wish to submit proposals to the undergraduate section of the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, which takes place in Chicago in April.
Human Subjects: Where relevant, students are obligated to follow protocols regarding the use of human subjects. Details of these protocols are available at https://oprs.research.illinois.edu/.
Students with Disabilities: The instructor will endeavor to make appropriate accommodations for students with disabilities. As described in the University of Illinois Student Code, these accommodations can be coordinated through the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES). The DRES Student Services Office is reachable at 217-333-4603 or [email protected].
Emergencies: Emergencies can happen anywhere and at any time, so it is important that we prepare for a situation in which our safety could depend on our ability to react quickly. Take a moment to learn the different ways to leave this building. Next, figure out the best place to go in case of severe weather: a low-level in the middle of the building, away from windows. And finally, if there’s ever someone trying to hurt us, our best option is to run out of the building. If we cannot do that safely, we’ll want to hide somewhere we can’t be seen, locking or barricading the door if possible and being as quiet as we can. We will not leave that safe area until we get an Illini-Alert confirming that it is safe to do so. If we can’t run or hide, we’ll fight back with whatever we can get our hands on. If you want to better prepare yourself for any of these situations, visit police.illinois.edu/safe. Remember you can sign up for emergency text messages at emergency.illinois.edu.
Course Schedule
Note: This schedule is subject to change by the instructor according to students’ needs or course delays.
Tuesday 27 August – Introduction
Thursday 29 August – NO CLASS (American Political Science Association Annual Meeting)
Tuesday 3 September
Thursday 5 September – Research Questions, Social Science, and Types of Research
What constitutes science? What constitutes social science? What unique obstacles do social scientists face? What makes for a good social science research question? How does the “ideal(ized)” social science research process unfold?
• Brancati – Chs. 1 and 3
• Look at the list of recent Department of Political Science honors theses (https://pol.illinois.edu/research/undergraduate-research). Can you infer the research question from the titles of the theses? How do they correspond to the criteria that Brancati discusses?
• Make an appointment with your potential adviser(s) for this week or next week. Get their feedback on the research question that you think will guide your thesis.
Tuesday 10 September
Thursday 12 September – Current Research in Political Science
o Choose an article of interest to you in the Annual Review of Political Science (https://www.annualreviews.org/loi/polisci) and read it to see how the author(s) summarize the state of the literature in a particular area: how do they describe the questions that are being asked in the research area? what open questions do they identify? what do they say about the ways that scholars are researching these questions?
o Research Question First Draft (Due on Friday 13 September). In no more than 300 words, motivate and describe your research question.
Tuesday 17 September
Thursday 19 September – Refining Research Questions
Getting your research question “right” is not an automatic process. We will spend this week fine-tuning research questions as you look ahead to submitting a revised version at the end of the month.
o Research Question Exercise (Suggested Reading Due by 5:00 p.m. on Monday 16 September for In-Class Exercise on Tuesday 17 September). Choose a research article that appears relevant for your research question. (It does not have to be an article with your exact research question; it just needs to be related.) How does the article present the research question? Does the hypothesis in the article answer the research question? Do the conclusions of the article refer back to the research question?
o Research Question Presentation (Slide Due by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday 11 September for In-Class Presentation on Thursday 19 September). Prepare one slide that motivates and presents your research question. Each student will make a three-minute presentation in class.
Tuesday 24 September
Thursday 26 September – Reviewing Existing Literature
Writing a good literature review is hard (even for faculty members!). First, you need to identify the existing literature; then you need to read and digest it, making sure that you understand what is happening in individual articles; finally, you need to synthesize it, combining the insights of different articles in a way that makes them speak to one another. The best literature reviews highlight themes in the literature that cut across multiple articles and provide a summary of settled issues and ongoing debates in a specific substantive realm.
o Brancati – Ch. 4
o Matthew S. Winters and Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro. 2013. “Lacking Information or Condoning Corruption: When Do Voters Support Corrupt Politicians?” Comparative Politics 45.4 (July): 418-36.
(b) the hypotheses, (c) the methods used to assess the hypotheses, and (d) the findings of the article.
o Contract with Adviser (Due on Friday 27 September). If you have not yet done so, it is time to formalize your relationship with your adviser. Please upload a PDF of an e-mail from your adviser in which they agree to advise you on the specific topic that you have been developing.
o Research Question Second Draft (Due on Monday 30 September). The second draft of your research question should include additional motivation for the research question. This assignment should look more like several paragraphs from the eventual introduction to the thesis, strongly motivating why the reader should care about the research question and making sure that the reader understands exactly what the research question is.
Tuesday 1 October
Thursday 3 October – Developing Probable Answers to Research Questions: Using Theory
How do we move from research questions to hypotheses? We will discuss the role of deductive theory in producing testable hypotheses in social scientific research. Most typically, social science theories posit a causal relationship, where a change in one factor (the explanatory or independent variable) is described as leading to a change in another factor (the outcome or dependent variable). Making sure that hypotheses are well-motivated theoretically can help guide empirical research design later on.
• Brancati – Ch. 6
• Robert I. Sutton and Barry M. Staw. 1995. “What Theory Is Not,” Administrative Science Quarterly 40(3): 371-84.
o Interview with Adviser (Due Friday 4 October). By interviewing your adviser, you should become more familiar with your adviser’s academic background and research interests so that the two of you can work better together. You can ask your adviser questions regarding such matters as how he or she became interested in social science research, his or her noteworthy research projects, his or her current research, and his or her views of important developments in their subfield. Submit a two-page summary of what you learned through this interview.
o Background Reading (Evidence Due on Monday 7 October). This is a crucial week. You’ve received feedback on your research question; you’ve formalized your relationship with your adviser. Now you have to really throw yourself into your topic! During this week, you should read between three and five articles related to your topic. Provide a bibliography of background reading that you have done to the instructor. Note the in-class discussion that we will have next week, and take notes on operationalization and measurement as you read!
Tuesday 8 October
Thursday 10 October – From Theoretical Concepts to Operationalized Concepts
our concepts. How do we operationalize concepts, and how do we judge indicators as to whether or not they succeed in measuring a concept?
• Brancati – Ch. 5
• Robert Adcock and David Collier. 2001. “Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research,” American Political Science Review 95(3): 529-46.
o In-Class Discussion of Operationalization and Measurement. Based on the background reading that you did last week, come to class this week prepared with examples of scholarship where you thought that concepts were operationalized in an obvious way, operationalized in a creative way, or operationalized in a way that did not seem entirely valid.
o Introduction, Literature Review, and Theory (Due on Friday 11 October). With the feedback on your research question, the background reading that you did last week, and the thinking that you did about theory in class, you are now in a position to put together a draft of the first part of your prospectus. This document should (a) motivate and then clearly state a research question, (b) discuss existing scholarship relevant to your question in a critical fashion, and (c) develop your theoretical claims in a way that results in one or more testable hypotheses.
Tuesday 15 October
Thursday 17 October – Choosing a Research Design
The modal senior honors thesis combines deductive theorizing about an answer to a research question with empirical data analysis. (Some students, however, may write senior theses that are completely theoretical, either trying to deductively answer a research question through theory or else trying to make a normative theoretical statement through logical reasoning.) Over the course of the next three weeks, we will discuss a variety of empirical research designs.
• Brancati – Ch. 7
• William Shadish, Thomas Cook, and Donald Campbell. 2002. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Chapters 4 and 5.
o In-Class Discussion of Research Design. From the reading that you have been doing for your thesis project, come to class this week prepared with examples of research designs that strike you as creative and/or that cause you to question the conclusions that the authors draw from them.
Tuesday 22 October
Thursday 24 October – The Experimental Gold Standard and Quasi-Experiments
• Brancati – Ch. 19
• Paul W. Holland. 1986. “Statistics and Causal Inference,” Journal of the American Statistical Association 81(396): 945-960.
o Revised Theory Section (Due on Friday 25 October). Based on the feedback on your theory section, make revisions specifically to this part of your prospectus draft. Make sure that your logic is clear and coherent and that the concepts you are employing are precisely defined. You may also revise your introduction and literature review at this time.
Tuesday 29 October
Thursday 31 October – Being Honest with Observational Data
Since experiments often are not possible, the modal senior thesis will work with observational data, either quantitative or qualitative. We will discuss some of the challenges that come with analyzing observational data, drawing inferences from observational data, and interpreting the results of analyses.
• Brancati – Chs. 20 and 14
o First Draft of Research Design Section (Due on Friday 1 November). How do you plan to test your hypothesis? Submit a description of (a) the overall methodology that you intend to use; (b) the data sources; and (c) the specific manner in which you will implement the methodology. Be sure that the research design you describe clearly relates back to your hypothesis and helps to answer the research question motivating your project.
Tuesday 5 November
Thursday 7 November – Data Sources and Data Analysis
We will review basic approaches to manipulating (i.e., organizing) and analyzing data this week while also highlighting some common data sources.
• Brancati – Chs. 15 – 18 and 13
Tuesday 12 November
Thursday 14 November – Flexible Week: Topic TBD
Based on specific interests that have emerged over the course of the semester, we will dedicate this week to the topics most relevant to students in the class.
Tuesday 19 November – Presenting Results
In advance of student presentations after Fall Break, we will discuss how to communicate research to an audience, both in written work and in oral presentations. What can a researcher do in order to make their findings as easily interpretable as possible?
Thursday 21 November, Tuesday 26 November, and Thursday 28 November – NO CLASS
Tuesday 3 December Thursday 5 December
Tuesday 10 December – Class Presentations
Wednesday 18 December – Prospectus Due by 12:00 p.m. to Instructor and Adviser
o The final prospectus will encompass the work from throughout the semester: the motivation of your research question; the development of a theoretically-informed answer to the research question; and a proposed research design for testing this hypothesis. In addition, you should include a timetable for work that you will do over the winter break and during the spring semester.
