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Textbook Site for:
Doing Empirical Political Research
James M. Carlson, Providence College
Mark S. Hyde, Providence College
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Move your reading from the book to the World Wide Web. Each link is selected to enrich a specific discussion in the textbook, indicated by the "To the Web" boxes in your text.

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Chapter 1: How Do We Know What's True?
  • Epistemology, The Theory of Knowledge
    The area of philosophy concerned with how individuals come to know what they know is called epistemology.

  • Philosophy of Social Science
    Political scientists, and more generally social scientists, raise epistemological issues in the context of what is called the philosophy of social science.


Chapter 2: Using the Scientific Method and Political Science

Chapter 3: Formulating Problems and Hypotheses
  • Computer Assisted Brainstorming
    A British company called Infinite Innovations Ltd has created software called Brainstorming Toolbox that is designed to facilitate creative thinking and lateral thinking. Their web site describes the software and offers a free download for trial.

  • The Concept Mapping Homepage
    This page offers a brief description and history of concept mapping, an example of the process and links that lead to a variety of software.

  • Inspiration
    InspirationŽ is a visual learning tool designed to aid the development of ideas and organize thinking. It is a graphical organizer that uses diagramming and outlines to aid in the development of concept maps and brainstorming. It was designed as an educational tool, but it can be used by researchers to organize and clarify ideas. A product description and a free trial download can be accessed from the creator's web page.

  • Federal Government Protection of Human Subjects
    The National Institutes of Health posts the transcript of The Belmont Report .

    The official website for Office for Human Research Protections, Department of Health and Human Services has information on IRB registration, policy guidance, educational materials, and workshops along with links to other relevant sites.

    The Office of Human Subjects, National Institutes of Health's website not only explains what it does but how it differs from the Office for Human Research Protections.

  • Ethical Codes of Professional Associations
    The American Political Science Association publishes its Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science here.

    The index of the American Sociological Association's code of ethics links to its principles and ethical standards.

    The code of ethics for the American Psychological Association can be found here. Look for the 2002 revised draft.


Chapter 4: Building a Bibliography: Determining What is Known

Chapter 5: Reviewing Previous Research

Chapter 6: Assessing Relationships: Association or Causality?
  • Determinism
    One of the fundamental questions in philosophy and science surrounds determinism.

  • Causality
    At this site you will find a discussion on causality assuming we live in a probabilistic world.

  • Probabilistic Causation
    This site examines the philosophical theory of probabilistic causation.


Chapter 7: Conceptualizing, Operationalizing, and Measuring Variables
  • Understanding Measurement: Precision and Accuracy
    MeasurementDevises.com provides a discussion of the importance of measurement and answers the question: "Why measure in the first place?"

    A web site located at the University of North Carolina provides a dictionary of measurement units. Find out about the size of a gnat's eye.

    A very useful website discusses reliability and validity within the context of essentials of a good psychological test.


Chapter 8: Organizing and Managing Data

Chapter 9: How to Achieve Maximum Representativeness: Sampling
  • Generating a Table of Random Numbers
    There are a number of web sites that facilitate the selection of random samples by allowing you to create tables of random numbers. Some of these sites are quite sophisticated and are designed to be used by mathematicians. We recommend the following site because it offers a tutorial and is easy to use: The Social Psychology Network sponsors the Research Randomizer.

    Another site you can try is Random.Org developed by Mads Haahr a PhD student at Trinity College, Dublin.

  • Polling Fiascos and Sample Error
    The Why Files web site at the University of Wisconsin reports the "science behind the news". Contributors to the site have offered interesting descriptions of famous polling disasters, several of which were due to poorly designed samples. There is also an extended discussion of the nature and calculation of sampling error. This site includes a discussion of fiascos. Also, Why Files looks at sampling error.

    Studyworks! Online created by MathSoft Engineer and Education also describes the polling surprises and sampling error. It gives two examples of polling surprises. Additionally, it covers sampling error and provides a downloadable worksheet to calculate error.


Chapter 10: Collecting Data Using Surveys
  • On-Line Sources for Survey Questions
    It is usually advantageous to use survey questions that have been used previously by other researchers. Questions that have been used frequently are often those that have been found to be valid and reliable. The use of standard questions also permits comparisons with previous research. There are a number of web sites that are sources of standard survey questions. Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina hosts the Public Opinion Poll Question Database.

    The Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK hosts The Question Bank: Social Surveys.

    Polling Organizations that report the results of their surveys on their web sites often provide the full texts of the questions they ask their respondents. The following are the links to some prominent pollsters:

    The Gallup Poll
    The Pew Research Center
    The Polling Report
    Zogby International
    The European Public Opinion Homepage

    The Department of Communications at the University of Kansas provides a comprehensive Worldwide listing of On LineSurvey Design Guide where sites are rated for their content and usability.

    There are a number of companies that specialize in questionnaire design. Most of them are concerned with marketing research, but have some experience with social scientific surveys. Two prominent organizations are Survey Shop and DataStar Inc.

  • Conducting Surveys Using the Internet or Fax Machines
    The Research Triangle Institute, a non-profit research organization, has been conducting surveys for more than forty years. Their web site describes how they conduct surveys using the web. They specialize in panel surveys where the same set of respondents is surveyed over time. They discuss issues of sample design and offer a demonstration using Quick Time or Windows Player.

    Swift Interactive Technologies is a market research firm that specializes in survey research using the World Wide Web. Their site has links to a number of technical papers and a brief statement by James H. Watt of the University of Connecticut about situations when web-based surveys may be appropriate.

    The Writing Center at Colorado State University offers a brief description of electronic surveys and a discussion of their advantages and disadvantages.

    Fax versus Mail in Gathering Data: An Analytical Study by Don Esslemont and Paul Pickering published in the Marketing Bulletin (1991, 2, 71-74) provides an evaluation of surveys distributed by fax machines.

    Donald Dillman of Washington State University provides a number of papers reporting his research on the utility of electronic surveys using the web and interactive voice response.

  • Obtaining Survey Data for Secondary Analysis
    Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan contains hundreds of data sets on a wide variety of topics.

    American National Election Studies allows you to view and download codebooks and data sets for free.

    University of California, San Diego's Social Science Data on the Net is a gateway to 442 sites that have numeric data ready to download; 109 catalogs and lists of data from data libraries, archives, vendors; 98 Data Libraries and data archives worldwide; and 48 organizations that sell and distribute data for a fee.

    The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research is the most comprehensive archive for public opinion data.

    Survey Documentation and Analysis Archive at the University of California, Berkeley provides access to the General Social Survey Cumulative Data File and the National Election Study Cumulative Data File as well as other surveys. You can browse codebooks, download full data sets or subsets of selected variables, create codebooks for subsets, and conduct analysis. This is an extremely useful site that is easy to use.

    While the focus is on religion, the data sets available at The American Religion Data contain many public opinion questions of interest to students of politics. The site contains a useful search engine so you can search by topic and locate questions in the archived data sets. You can also browse codebooks and download data sets with ease.


Chapter 11: Collecting and Organizing Data from Published Sources

  1. On-Line Sources of Data That Describe Collectivities
     As we have noted, there are numerous on-line sources of published data that describe collectivities. The following are links to all of the web sites we have discussed in Chapter 11 along with many other sources:

  2. Sources of Data About Individuals
     As we have noted there are numerous on-line sources of published data that describe political elites. Links to all of the web sites we have discussed in Chapter 11 along with many other sources.

  3. Examples of Research Using Content Analysis
     There are some very useful on-line annotated bibliographies of research using content analysis. There is also some interesting original research published on the web. What follows are links to several annotated bibliographies, some current research, and a site that describes how to subscribe to a listserv with a focus on content analysis.

    Annotated Bibliography of Content Analysis Research.

    Steve Mizrach of Florida International University collected Content Analysis: An Annotated Bibliography.

    A useful bibliography compiled by German Psychologist Matthias Romppel.

    Center for the Media and Public Affairs has examples of research using content analysis.


Chapter 12: Studying only a Few Cases: Intensive Approaches

Chapter 13: How to Describe and Summarize a Single Variable
  • Internet Glossary of Statistical Terms
    Internet Glossary of Statistical Terms is a quick reference for the definition and explanation of statistics terminology.

  • World Wide Web Virtual Library: Statistics
    The WWW Virtual Library: Statistics provides links to every facet of statistics - university statistics departments throughout the world, news groups, government and private statistics institutes, on-line educational resources, and more.

    The following two interactive sites both allow you to see how much of the area under the normal curve is accounted for by moving a certain number of standard deviation units above or below the mean:

    Gary McClelland of the University of Colorado at Boulder created Seeing Statistics.

    Charles Stanton of California State University, Santa Barbara developed this demonstration for Normal Distribution Calculator.


Chapter 14: Constructing and Interpreting Bivariate Tables
  • Washington Statistical Society
    For a more general introduction to the presentation of data, see A Guide To Good Graphics, presented by the Washington Statistical Society.


Chapter 15: Graphing and Describing Linear Bivariate Relationships
  • Outlier Effect
     At this site you can see the effects of adding cases to a regression analysis, including the outliers effect. Cases added close to the line produce little change, but those added more distant from the line, outliers, change the line more dramatically.

    These two sites allow you to view scatterplots then try to draw the best fitting regression line or guess the correlation coefficient. Both sites provide good practice for becoming more familiar with regression analysis:

    Drawing regression lines by eye
    Guessing correlations


Chapter 16: Analyzing More Than Two Variables

Chapter 17: Determining the Statistical Significance of Results
  • Wrong Interpretation
    A government official gets confused during a question and answer period about the meaning of statistical significance.

  • 2X2 Chi Squares
    This web site lets you calculate chi squares for a 2 X 2 chi square , allowing you to change any or all of the values in the table to see the effect.

  • Understanding Chi Square
    This site provides connection to a series of interactive links that will help you better understand and learn more about Chi Square.

  • Chi Square for Any Size Table
    This interactive link calculates Chi Square values for any size table.


Chapter 18: Reporting the Results of Empirical Political Research: Pulling It All Together

  • Presenting Research
     Our discussion has focused on written communication of research, but there are other means for communicating results. Oral reports of research at professional meetings, to the mass media, or in other forums can be enhanced by the use of computer projectors and presentation software such as PowerPoint. Social scientists increasingly report their research during "poster sessions" at professional conferences where they are given space on a bulletin board to summarize their papers visually and stimulate one-on-one discussions with interested colleagues. Information about making effective presentations can be found at the following sites:

    The University of Kansas hosts an online tutorial series on Effective Presentations.
    Louisiana State University provides a PowerPoint Tutorial.

  • Calculating Response Rates for Surveys
     The American Association of Public Opinion Research has set the standard for calculating response rates for surveys. You can find a thorough description at its web site.

  • Style and Writing
    The original version of Elements of Style written by William Strunk, Jr. and published in 1918 is available on-line.

    Additionally a directory of On-line Writing Laboratories located at Purdue University can be accessed.

    Unfortunately, the Style Manual for Political Science, published by the American Political Science Association, is available only in hard copy form. An abbreviated version is provided by the University of Wisconsin Writing Laboratory.

    Cornell University Library provides an abbreviated version of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

    Purdue University posts the guidelines as stated by the Modern Language Association.

  • Visual Display of Data
     There are a plethora of web sites that provide guidance and examples for creating visual displays of quantitative findings. Some useful links are listed below:

    Gallery of Data Visualization: The Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics
    Graphical Data Presentation
    A Guide to Good Graphics



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