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jump to a sectionCh 1: How Do We Know What's True? Ch 2: Using the Scientific Method and... Ch 3: Formulating Problems and Hypotheses Ch 4: Building a Bibliography Ch 5: Reviewing Previous Research Ch 6: Assessing Relationships Ch 7: Conceptualizing, Operationalizing... Ch 8: Organizing and Managing Data Ch 9: How to Achieve Maximum Representatives Ch 10: Collecting Data Using Surveys Ch 11: Collecting and Organizing Data... Ch 12: Studying only a Few Cases Ch 13: How to Describe and Summarize... Ch 14: Constructing and Interpreting... Ch 15: Graphing and Describing Linear... Ch 16: Analyzing More Than Two Variables Ch 17: Determining the Statistical ... Ch 18: Reporting the Results of Empirical...

Chapter 1: How Do We Know What's True?

• Distinguish among different methods of knowing about the world: investment, authority, logic, faith, and science.
• Understand the rationale for using science as the basis for learning about political behavior.
• Understand that, in scientific terms, truth is tentative.
• Recognize the boundaries and limits of science for knowing about the world in general and for studying human behavior.

Chapter 2: Using the Scientific Method and Political Science

• Describe the characteristics of scientific knowledge.
• Describe some errors that often result from personal human inquiry.
• Distinguish between description and explanation.
• Summarize the basic assumptions of social science.
• Describe the general steps in the process of conducting a social scientific study.

Chapter 3: Formulating Problems and Hypotheses

• Describe a set of criteria that can be used for evaluating potential research topics.
• Discuss ethical issues concerning the treatment of human subjects.
• Transform a general question about politics into testable hypotheses.
• Describe the characteristics of a useful hypothesis.
• Reformulate questions and statements about politics into useful hypotheses.
• Identify the elements of a hypotheses, including variables, their values, and the units of analysis they describe.

Chapter 4: Building a Bibliography: Determining What is Known

• Develop a strategy for library and World Wide Web searches.
• Demonstrate familiarity with specialized dictionaries, encyclopedias, and yearbooks.
• Locate books and articles published in professional periodicals relevant to a particular question about politics.
• Locate scholarly papers that have been presented at professional meetings.
• Distinguish between articles in professional periodicals that test empirical hypotheses about politics from articles that only describe or offer opinions.
• Locate and evaluate information on the World Wide Web.

Chapter 5: Reviewing Previous Research

• Identify the components of an article reporting the results of empirical political research.
• Dissect an article from a professional political science journaldescribe and critically analyze in their own words the research question, conceptual hypotheses, operational hypotheses, method of observation or data collection, method of data analysis and presentation, and conclusions.
• Summarize in just a few paragraphs the findings of an article reporting empirical research.
• Write a focused literature review of research on a specific topic.

Chapter 6: Assessing Relationships: Association or Causality?

• Distinguish between independent and dependent variables in a hypothesis and identify the direction of the relationship between them.
• Differentiate between association and causation in the relationship between two variables and know the four conditions required for establishing a causal relationship.
• Grasp the meaning of and write a null hypothesis.
• Explain the use of control variables in establishing causal relationships.
• Recognize and understand the difference between antecedent and intervening variables.
• Understand the process of elaborating a hypothesis.

Chapter 7: Conceptualizing, Operationalizing, and Measuring Variables

• Develop useful conceptual and operational definitions of political science concepts.
• Describe and distinguish the levels of measurement of variables.
• Explain validity of measurements and how it is established.
• Explain reliability of measurements and how it is established.
• Distinguish between indexes and scales designed to measure concepts.
• Illustrate how moving from conceptualization to measurement of variables results in an operational hypothesis that has been deduced from an original conceptual hypothesis.

Chapter 8: Organizing and Managing Data

• Understand why data must be stored in computer files and analyzed with software designed for that purpose.
• Define and explain the component parts of a data matrix.
• Interpret a codebook to make sense of an existing data file and create an original codebook for their own data.
• Create and enter the values of variables into an SPSS data file.
• Know what a frequency distribution is and why that procedure is initially run on a data file.
• Run and interpret a frequency distribution for a data set using SPSS.

Chapter 9: How to Achieve Maximum Representativeness: Sampling

• Explain the advantages of drawing representative samples.
• Distinguish between probability and nonprobability samples.
• Explain how simple random, systematic, and cluster samples are drawn.
• Describe alternative nonprobability sample designs.
• Compare and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different sample designs.
• Calculate sampling error and determine sample sizes.

Chapter 10: Collecting Data Using Surveys

• Write open- and closed-ended questions to gather information from respondents.
• Evaluate the quality of survey questions and describe the types of problems that arise from inappropriate question wording.
• Construct a questionnaire or interview form, taking into account question order, formatting, and planned coding procedures.
• Compare the advantages and disadvantages of various methods of administering (mail, face-to-face, and telephone) surveys.
• Describe the techniques that can be used to maximize return rates for questionnaires distributed by mail.
• Identify some sources of survey data collected by others and available for secondary analysis.

Chapter 11: Collecting and Organizing Data from Published Sources

• Identify and locate data from published sources that describe a variety of units of analysis.
• Describe the advantages and disadvantages of using data from published sources.
• Evaluate the utility of data from published sources for testing hypotheses.
• Code and organize data from published sources so that it is ready for analysis using statistical software such as SPSS.
• Describe the process of collecting and analyzing the content of mass-media messages.
• Describe the strengths and weaknesses of content analysis.

Chapter 12: Studying only a Few Cases: Intensive Approaches

• Explain the fundamental distinction between extensive and intensive analysis.
• Understand the logic of experimentation in controlling extraneous independent variables.
• Understand and explain the differences between internal and external validity.
• Distinguish among different experimental designs and quasi-experiments.
• Explain Q-technique as an approach to understanding political attitudes and dispositions and distinguish it from extensive approaches.
• Understand what a focus group is and how it is employed in empirical research.

Chapter 13: How to Describe and Summarize a Single Variable

• Identify the differences among univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistics.
• Understand what is meant by descriptive statistics.
• Calculate and interpret a frequency distribution, a range or interquartile range, a mode or modal category, a median or a median grouping, an arithmetic mean, a standard deviation, and a z-score.
• Understand why measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion are used in univariate analysis.
• Define a normal distribution.
• Explain the importance of the standard deviation in probability sampling and comparison of scores from distributions.

Chapter 14: Constructing and Interpreting Bivariate Tables

• Recognize and name the component parts of percentage tables.
• Read and interpret the data in percentage tables.
• Construct different types of percentage tables to display data and show relationships in one’s own data.
• Calculate and interpret the lambda and gamma statistics that summarize relationships displayed in percentage tables.

Chapter 15: Graphing and Describing Linear Bivariate Relationships

• Verbally describe the logic underlying regression and correlation analysis.
• Understand how to construct and read a scatterplot and determine if regression analysis is appropriate to use.
• Understand each component of an equation that describes a straight line.
• Grasp what the slope and Y-intercept of a regression equation reveals about the relationship between two variables.
• Define a beta weight and explain why it is used in regression analysis.
• Explain the logic behind the Pearson correlation coefficient and how it reveals the strength of a relationship in regression analysis.

Chapter 16: Analyzing More Than Two Variables

• Understand the process of multivariate analysis and why it is important.
• Describe what a control variable is and how it is used in testing a bivariate hypothesis.
• Recognize and interpret the various effects of a control variable on a bivariate relationship and/or a dependent variable as shown in percentage tables.
• Interpret the regression coefficients, beta weights, and multiple correlation coefficient that result from multiple linear regression.

Chapter 17: Determining the Statistical Significance of Results

• Explain the concept of statistical significance and how it differs from substantive significance.
• Comprehend that statistical significance involves testing the null hypothesis.
• Understand when it is appropriate to employ a chi square, a t-test, or an F-test
• Know how to interpret the benchmark levels of statistical significance.
• Calculate a chi square value for a crosstabulation.

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

• Outline and write a report of the findings of an empirical political research project.
• Understand different ways in which the statistical results of empirical political research can be presented in tabular and graphical form.
• Recognize the ethical issues that might arise in the process of completing research reports.