APLS 301 Scope and Research Methods
in Political Science Course Homepage
Fall 2007


Welcome to APLS 301. We are using an on-line text for this course as well as a text/workbook and has a lot of useful exercises in it. I will be updating things and probably only be a few days ahead of you. I will also be adding dates of when things are due, so you should check this page frequently to see what is due for the next class! I will also let you know what is due when in class.

Thursday, August 23. 

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Go over syllabus
• Overview of nature of scientific knowledge and the scientific process
• Introduction to MicroCase -- Bring the Corbett Text

Tuesday, August 28. Course Introduction

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Read the "Course Introduction" above
• Do the journal assignment described at the end of the "Course Introduction." You will present your findings to the class -- about 5 minutes each.  The papers will be collected for homework credit.
• I will preview the exit poll we will be doing later in the semester by showing you surveys from the last few years (exit polls in even years and general population telephone polls in odd years).

Thursday, August 30. History of Political Science and Problems that Political Science Focuses Upon

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Complete assignment 1 described at the end of the reading shown just above, "History of PS and Problems..." (the one where you find two journal articles that illustrate subareas of study in political science). Again, be prepared to present them in class. The papers will be collected for homework credit.
• Also see Rational Choice article (this is in MS Word, so you can easily save it to a disk) and answer the questions about it that are at the end of the History of Political Science reading above.
• Read Corbett, Chapter one, if you have a text. We will do the Worksheet for chapter 1 as an in-class exercise.

Tuesday, September 4.  Theory -- what do we already know?

  In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Discussion of theory -- see link below
• Note: this is the same assignment as at the end of the Theory reading above. Go again to some political science scholarly journal. Using ONE different scholarly article other than you have used before, describe the theory section of the article. How many sources did the author utilize? What are the types of sources used, journal articles, books, popular magazine articles, or what? What is the major theory in the article? Is the theory empirical or normative? Is it micro, middle range, or macro? Again, be prepared to present your articles and the answers to the questions in class. And I will again take up the papers for homework credit.
• We will familiarize ourselves with the MicroCase statistical package and data sets as a class together. We will do chapter 1 in the workbook together.
• I will also preview the material for the next class.

Thursday, Sept. 6. Concepts, Variables, and Measurement--what are the key ideas involved in the problem and theory?
    How can we measure varying properties associated with concepts (variables)? How reliable and valid are our measurements?

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Read Corbett, Chapter 2. Read the material on "concepts" at the link above and answer the questions at the end of that on-line reading. That will be turned in as homework.
• In the lab section of the class we will do the exercise in chapter 2 of Corbett, which will count as a separate assignment.

Tuesday, Sept. 11. Operationalization--Exactly what should we gather data from? Cases, units of analysis, population, sources of data, and levels of measurement. 

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Read the reading on the link above on "Operationalization" and do the assignment at the end of that reading.
• Read Chapter 3 in Corbett. We will do the exercise in Corbett, chapter 3, in class.
• I will introduce/preview the material on relationships

Thursday, Sept. 13.  Variable Relationships--path diagrams (sometimes called arrow diagrams) 

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Read the material at the link above--Variable Relationships--and do the assignment at the end of the reading.
• Read Chapter 4 in Corbett. We will do the exercises in Corbett in class.
• I will introduce the materials about compound measures

 

Tuesday, Sept. 18. Compound Measures--how to combine items and questions for a more complex measure

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

        Read the material at the link above -- Compound Measures. No written assignment. There is no reading in Corbett concerning compound measures. I will need the day to explain the material for this unit. We will also do some in-class exercises.

        2007 Questionnaire -- Draft 1 -- measuring attitudes about immigration with a complex compound measure

Thursday, Sept. 20. Compound Measures -- continued

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Develop a compound measure, using one of the techniques described in the handout on compound measures, to operationalize the concept of "partisanship." Think about all the things that contribute to the concept of being involved in and caring about the party affairs. Each aspect must be measured by an objective question and you must have a way to combine the individual questions for each respondent. Be prepared to present it to the class, and of course to turn it in for homework.
• I will introduce/preview the material on hypotheses.

Tuesday, Sept. 25.  Library Exercise -- Finding Sources for the theory section of a research paper, the literature search

We will meet in HSS 206 at the regular time and then, after going over the homework, go over to the library for the rest of the day. As an in-class assignment following and based on the library workshop, you will be expected to create an annotated bibliography for one of the following research areas (which you might think of as dependent variables): presidential performance ratings, attitudes toward immigration and Hispanics, attitudes toward the Iraq War, regional self-identification (particularly identification with the South), political knowledge, consuming political news, the Battle Flag controversy in South Carolina, voter participation in presidential primaries, voter choice in presidential primaries, preferences in leadership style (benevolent versus strong leaders), religious fundamentalism and political values.

I chose these areas because these are the areas in which we will probably be asking questions on our survey, and we will have variables measuring all these things, so you will be able to see how we can explain these attitudes and opinions using other variables we will measure, such as ethnicity, age, education, gender, ideology (which can also be a dependent variable), and party identification (also can be a dependent variable). Some of the variables listed in the first list may also be independent variables as well.

The reason to look at the literature is to see what explanations (independent variables) other researchers have found for change in their dependent variables. All this is part of the theory stage of the research process and the theory stage of your research paper. 

Note on the theory surrounding the question about ideal leadership as strong or nurturing. We have been using this question for a number of years. It is based on the theory of George Lakoff and can be seen at http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html. If you are interested in how people get the views they have about politics and ideology, this might be an interesting one to do.

Thursday, Sept. 27. No Class today -- I will be at a conference presenting a paper

Tuesday October 2.  Hypotheses--how does one variable affect another?

In-class and assignments for the day.

• Read the material at the link above -- Hypotheses
• Do the assignment at the end of the Hypotheses reading -- to be turned in as homework.
• Write two hypotheses that attempt to explain why some people are more anti-immigrant or anti-immigration in their attitudes than other people.
• Read Chapter 5 in Corbett. We will do the exercises in chapter 5 of Corbett in class.

Thursday, October 4. Data Gathering -- how should we collect information to test our hypothesis?

                                    Sampling -- how many to sample and which ones  to pick 

                                    Calculating Sampling error (bring a calculator to class that has square roots)

In-class and assignments for the day. Bring a calculator to class that will calculate square roots. 

• Read the material at the link above (Sampling). Do NOT do the exercises at the end!
• Read Chapter 6 in Corbett
• We will do some sampling exercises and problems that I will give you in class.

Tuesday, October 9.  Sampling and sampling error -- continued.

In-class activities and assignment for the day. 

• Homework: review the material at the link above ("Sampling," from the last class) and complete problems 1-7 at the end of that reading -- we will go over them in class
• We will do questions 8 and 9 in class as a group, so do NOT do them for homework
• In-class exercise in sampling and estimating error using M&M's.

        We will complete the exercises in Chapter 6 of Corbett in class

Thursday October 11.  FALL BREAK

Tuesday October 16.  Surveys--different types, tradeoffs, interviewer training and interviewer bias, question bias, and questionnaire bias

In-class and assignments for the day. 

• Read the materials at the link above (Surveys). We will go over that material in class and start working on questions for our telephone survey that we will be doing over the next couple of weeks. During election years we do exit polls -- listed below are the materials on how that was set up and how well it did in predicting actual election results. 
• We will also do the sample design for our exit survey -- it will be a cluster sample stratified by type of area in the county (Aiken, N. Augusta, Valley area, and rural) and stratified by gender (about half female and half male) with specific individuals chosen using a systematic sample where every k^th  one is determined by the time that the previous respondent took filling out the questionnaire rather than a set number. 

    2002 Sample Design and Polling Assignments

    Actual Precinct Returns--2000

    2003 Call Sheets and fallback statements

Example survey materials:
    1) Borden Survey: Questionnaire A and Questionnaire D (there were A-F different versions) and Coding Sheet A and Coding Sheet D (also A - F versions, one to correspond with each questionnaire). The importance here is how one question may influence another.

    2) Aiken County 2001 Telephone Survey -- questionnaire and call sheet

    3) Aiken County 2002 Exit Survey -- questionnaire

    4) Aiken County 2003 Telephone Survey -- questionnaire

    5) Aiken County 2004 Exit Survey -- questionnaire

    6) 2005 Telephone Survey -- questionnaire

    7) Draft of 2007 Telephone Survey -- questionnaire and call sheet and fallback statements

Assignment: Using the knowledge you have gained from examining and studying questionnaires, design a 6-8 question survey that focuses on how Aiken County residents feel about issues facing the state and nation (ones that you might like to use in your research paper).

Thursday, October 18.  Click on the Test I Review and complete it for class. We will go over it in class. The take-home Midterm will be given out at the end of class. It will be due by class time (1:40 pm) on Tuesday October 23.

Here is your Midterm Exam in MS Word format. Please print it and fill in the answers.

Tuesday, October 23.   Midterm Due -- 5 pm.  Preparing for our Telephone Survey. I will use class today to preview the rest of the semester and get us started on our telephone survey. We will look at interviewer training, use of call sheets, and procedures in telephone survey work. I will also have a sign-up sheet for times to do your interviews.

Here are some pictures of what was done in the exit polls we did in previous years, even though this year we are doing a count-wide telephone survey.

  2002 Exit Polling Pictures -- the class did well!

  2004 Exit Polling Pictures -- again a job well done -- in the apls301 tradition!

  2006 Exit Polling Pictures -- another great class effort!

  Press Release of the 2004 Exit Poll

  Press Release of the 2005 Exit Poll

  Press Release of the 2006 Exit Poll

 

Thursday, October 25. Analysis--what do we do with the data once it is gathered, as it soon will be! Descriptive statistics

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Read chapter 8 in Corbett. It is pretty straightforward and easy. 
• We will do the chapter 8 worksheets in Corbett in class today. 

Tuesday, October 30.   Reading Crosstabs. 

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• I will go over the materials on reading crosstabs
• we will do the Worksheet in Corbett for Chapter 9 in class. 

Thursday, November 1. Overview of Coding and Loading of Data

Tuesday, November 6. Getting Started on your Research Paper and Introduction to Significance and Measures of Association

In-class activities and assignment for the day

• Based on the questionnaire we are using, tentatively choose an independent and dependent variable for your research paper. Write a draft of the problem statement for your research paper. In this paragraph you should explain why these variables are worthy of study. 
• Write a sample selection description for the telephone  survey. This is the data gathering stage in the research process. This will be a section of your report. Describe exactly how the sample was chosen, using the descriptive terms you have learned (like stratified, weighted, and systematic). We will nail down the details in class. But I want you to have a draft you can present on how you think it should be done.
• I will introduce the two ideas of significance and measures of association. Here you will learn how to calculate and use the chi square statistic to see how likely any relationship could occur by accident because of sampling. Once we have a relationship that is unlikely to have occurred by chance, we will then use another kind of statistic to see how strong the relationship is. These statistics are called measures of association. 

Thursday, November 8.   Significance and Measures of Association -- continued

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

• Read Chapter 10 in Corbett
• We will continue exercises on measures of statistical significance (particularly chi square) and measures of association
• If time, we will do the exercises in Corbett, Chapter 10.

Tuesday, November 13.  Controls on Crosstabs.

Written assignment for homework: Using the Aiken Co Sur 2006 (or 2007 if that is available yet -- they will be on the K shared drive under "Bob Botsch") data set, choose an independent and dependent variables and test the bivariate relationship, fully explaining the relationship (interpreting the crosstab), the significance level, and the appropriate measure of strength.

In-class activities and assignment for the day.

Read the above section on controls and we will work on the exercise in Corbett for chapter 12 in class. 

 

    Announcement: Our Survey is now complete. Here is the info you need for your research papers:

• the n is 414 usable interviews (that includes some that were partial but usable)
• the dates for the survey were 25 October - 11 November
• the response rate was 53% (790 people contacted and 419 at least partially completed -- the reason this is a little more than the 414 is that we threw out 5 that we judged were of not acceptable quality). While this is a little lower than I had hoped, it is still perfectly acceptable and not at all atypical for modern surveys.

Thursday, November 15.  Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). This is the procedure for testing hypotheses when you have an independent variable that is nominal or ordinal with a few levels and a dependent variable that is ratio. It is also the equivalent to a comparison of measures of central tendency that also accounts for the spread of the data around the means. Do the reading below. 

In-class activities and assignment for the day

• Read Chapter 11 in Corbett.
• We will do the exercises in Chapter 11 in class.    

Tuesday, November 20. No class -- start working on your research paper -- you now have the data. Please note: I made some further corrections to the weighting since last class because I was able to get the correct percentages by ethnicity for those over 18. Note you assignment for next Tuesday's class.

Thursday November 22. THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY! 

Tuesday, November 27.  Getting started on your research paper

• Written Homework: To get you started on another step in your research paper, I want you to type a draft of your theory section of the research paper. That means you MUST have references! So this will require some library and electronic research. You must have at least 5 separate references, and 2 of them MUST be scholarly. You also need a section at the end called references in which you list those references.
• Be prepared to present your bivatiate relationship to the class and show and interpret the appropriate crosstabs or whatever procedure you will be using in your paper. We will take turns in presenting this to the class and then the rest of us will critique it! This should help you a lot in having a perfect table and interpretation on your papers! I will also ask you what control variable you plan to use, so be thinking about that as well.

Make sure that you find references in your theory section that define your concepts and then review several works that deal with your dependent variable. The key question is how they explain variation in the independent variable. Hopefully some of them will suggest independent variables that we have used so that you can replicate in a new setting and new time. Remember that all surveys are snapshots in time!

Here is the form I would like you to use for electronic references in your "References" section:

         U.S. General Accounting Office. 1995. U.S. Vietnam
             relations: Issues and implications. Available [Online]:
             <http://bubba.ucc.okstate.edu/wais/GPOAccess> Select:
             General Accounting Office Reports, 10/94- Search:
             "vietnam relations" [25 October 1996].

The citation in the text for this reference would by as follows: (U.S. Accounting Office, 1995).

A book the citation in the text would be as follows: The most important protection of liberty in a nation is in the hearts and minds of citizens (Erikson and Tedin, 2001, 143).

Then the reference at the end would be as follows:

         Erikson, Robert S. and Kent L. Tedin. 2001. American Public Opinion (6th edition).
             New York: Longman Publishers.

If it is an article from a journal, the reference would be as follows:

         Steed, Robert P., Laurence Moreland, and Todd A. Baker. 1996. "Electoral and Party Development in South Carolina." Journal of Political Science 24: 33-62.
    

Thursday, November 29. Correlation and Regression (you use regression when both of the variables are ratio, or if you have an ordinal variable has a lot of values -- at least seven)      

In-class activities and assignment for the day

• Read Chapter 13 in Corbett.
• We will do the exercises in Chapter 13 in class.

Tuesday, December 4. Report Writing -- How to present data when you have one dependent variable of interest and a whole range of possible independent variables. Example, an analysis of the Moore/Sanford trial heat question from the 2005 survey -- ignore the assignment in this link

Thursday December 6. Wrap-up for the course

• Theory reformulation and Reports--how do we draw conclusions from the data and then write it up in a report? See Corbett, Chapter 14, which just  reinforces the outline that you will need for the paper.

• Sample of a completed final research report. The last chapter in Corbett (Chapter 14) may also be of some help. What should be of most help is the link shown above on Theory reformulation and reports.  Sample Research Paper without tables
• Preview the final exam, which will be a take-home exam.  CLICK HERE here to get a copy in MS Word. 

Press Release of 2007 Survey

Final Exam and Research Papers -- DUE Friday, December 14 at 9 am -- no exceptions!!! Late papers will be severely penalized.