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Course Schedule and Activities --
under construction -- though I think it is pretty close right
now to what we will actually do when! But some dates and precise
assignments may change!
Thursday, August 18.
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
Tuesday, August 23. Chapter 1. Course Introduction
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
- Read the "Course Introduction" in
text
- Overview of nature of scientific knowledge and
the scientific process -- solving a problem exercise (Low enrollments in
American Government classes, circa 1997)
-
Class exercise on evaluating sources of knowledge and applying the
scientific method
Thursday, August 25. Chapter 1.
Continued
- 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.
Tuesday, August 30.Chapter
2. 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
chapter 2. (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.
Thursday, Sept. 1.
Chapter 2. Continued
-
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 Chapter 2,
History of Political Science.
- Microcase exercises in-class using previous
data sets
So you want to be a grad
student in political science? -- a satirical look at how rational choice
has affected the discipline! from You-Tube
Tuesday, Sept. 6. Chapter 3. Theory -- what do we already
know?
In-class activities and assignment for the day.
- Discussion of theory – read chapter 3
(those in or who have take the 110 course
(number changed to 121 in fall 2011) will note that much of this is lifted from the chapter in that on-line text)
- Note: this is the same assignment as at the
end of Chapter 3. 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.
- More in-class MicroCase exercises to show why
we need theory
Thursday, Sept. 8. Chapter 4. Concepts, Variables, and Measurement
Key Questions in chapter: 1) What are the key ideas
(concepts) involved in the problem and theory? 2) How can we measure varying
properties associated with concepts (variables)? 3) How reliable and valid are our measurements?
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
- Read Chapter 4 and do the exercises at the end
of the chapter as homework.
- In the lab section of the class we will do
additional Microcase exercises to get some more practice in dealing with
they key questions and ideas pertaining to concepts, variables, and
measurement.
Tuesday, Sept. 13. Chapter 5. 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 chapter 5 and do the assignment at the
end of that reading for homework.
- Microcase exercises in class showing how
you can use aggregate data (SC County data) or survey data (Aiken County
Survey 2000) to look at the same question.
- I will introduce/preview the material on
relationships
Thursday, Sept. 15. Chapter 6. Variable Relationships--path diagrams
(sometimes called arrow diagrams)
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
- Read chapter 6 and do the assignment at the
end as homework
- Microcase exercises in class—I will ask each of
you to find bivariate (two variable) relationships that we can test from previous surveys and
looking at possible conditioning and confounding variables, as well as
possible intervening variables
-
Identifying variables in a
first draft of our USCA
Student Survey Questionnaire
- I will introduce the materials about compound
measures, if time.
Tuesday, Sept 20. Chapter 7 Compound Measures--how to combine items
and questions for a more complex measure
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
- Read chapter 7
- Microcase exercises in class—I will ask you to
develop several compound measures from questions in previous surveys
performed by this class. We will also see if the three questions
pertaining to some sense of ethnic antipathy in the 2008 exit poll
(Confederate flag, Obama’s religion, and blacks having too much power)
could form a Guttman scale.
Ethnic Antipathy Paper
with this compound measure described in it.
-
Homework due at the beginning of
class--see the first
draft of our USCA Student Survey Questionnaire and identify two or more
questions that could be used to create a compound variable and describe how
you would create this variable.
Thursday. Sept 22. Compound Measures -- continued
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Because coding coding and creating compound measures
is difficult, we
will do some additional in-class exercises today.
-
Homework: Answer the questions at the end
of chapter 7. We will go over them in class.
-
We will go over a couple of things we did not
have time to do last time, like looking at the Ethnic Antipathy scale.
-
And I will introduce/preview the material on
hypotheses if time
Tuesday, Sept. 27. Chapter 8. Hypotheses--how does one variable affect
another?
In-class and assignments for the day.
Thursday, Sept. 29. Chapter 9. Sampling and Data Gathering --
how should we collect information to test our hypothesis? How many to
sample and which ones to pick?
In-class and assignments for the day. Bring
a calculator to class that will calculate square roots.
- Read Chapter 9. Do NOT do the exercises at the
end!
- We will do some additional sampling exercises
and problems that I will give you in class.
- In-class exercise in sampling and estimating
error using M&M's
Tuesday Oct. 4. Sampling -- continued (Bring a calculator to
class!)
In-class and assignments for the day. Bring
a calculator to class that will calculate square roots.
-
Re-read Chapter 9. Do the exercises 1-7 at the end for
homework. We will do 8 and 9
in class as an exercise.
-
In class we will do some exercises in
choosing different kinds of samples
-
We will start drawing our sample of USCA
students
Thursday, October 6. Sampling and sampling error -- continued
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Homework: using the concepts from our draft
questionnaire, pick out a dependent variable that you think important enough
to study for your research paper. Then choose several possible independent
variables that you think will help explain change in the dependent variable.
Be prepared to present this to the class. This is to get you started in
thinking about your research paper, which you will start writing next class!
-
How we might build a sample for the 2012 Aiken County exit poll based on the 2008 election
results -- an in-class exercise (even though that survey is a year away):
-
Materials for planning for this year and previous years:
-
2006 Aiken County returns
-
2002 Aiken County returns
-
2008 Aiken County returns by precinct from SC Election Commission website
-
2008 Sample Planning estimates
-
2010 Sample Planning estimates
-
2012 Sample Planning estimates template (this is the one we will work
on)
-
2008 Sample Design and student assignments
-
2010 Sample Design and student assignments
- Using the 2008 Aiken County Precinct returns
(either the one I gave you or the one you can reprint from above), we first
need to determine whether or not the precincts we have been sampling in the
past (precinct numbers 1, 3, 5, 6/47, 11, 12, 17, 18, 25, 29, 47, 48) would
have provided a good estimate of the overall county on the vote for
president 2008. This will help us in deciding which precincts to use in 2012.
We may be able to reweight some of the precincts, that is counting them as a
lower or higher percentage of the total vote than they actually were to make
them better fit the actual county returns.
- Additional exercises in class—I will give you some additional
weighting and re-weighting examples to work on, as this is something
that most students have trouble in doing. We will also do some exercises
choosing simple random samples and systematic samples.
Tuesday, October 11. Time out to
Start our Research Papers: Problem statements
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Read one of the chapters on socialization in the texts that are on reserve
in the library, paying particular attention to sections that cover concepts
we are measuring. I highlighted some of the areas that may be of interest in
the tables of contents in the texts. You might also look for books in the
library and jornal articles as well on political socialization of students.
Also look at the papers we have done in this area to get one good ideas for
a problem statement. Botsch College Student paper
#1
(Voting Among College Students, 2008) and
#2 (Trends in Political Knowledge, 2010). You can look up some of the
sources in those papers for further ideas on why your problem is important.
Remember that why your problem is important can come out of popular
literature as well as scholarly articles.
-
Write your problem statement (typed in a Word document--.doc or .docx--we
will need it in this form later for the SWORD exercise) in a paragraph for homework to be turned in.
It must answer the question of why this is important. Made sure you
cite any references you use using APA style (see link in left panel at top).
I will have you each present them and discuss them in class.
Thursday October 13. Beginning the Research Papers, continued: Theory
and Concepts
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Based on whatever revision you had to do on your problem statement, write
your theory/concepts section of the paper. This should answer the question
of what do we already know about the problem you have chosen, and it
should include enough scholarly sources in addition to whatever you used in
the problem statement to total FIVE (again, APA style).
- In
class I will ask each of you questions about what you have written and then
have you go to the board and present a hypothesis that your theory suggests
which helps shed light on the problem you chose.
-
Current version of our
survey in web page form..
Tuesday October 18. Using the SWORD system to review our papers
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Make sure you have access to an electronic copy of your paper thus far. It
should include three sections: Problem, Theory/Concepts, and Hypotheses.
-
Getting all of us up and on the SWORD system. We will make sure all of you
are subscribed to the class, and then go over what I expect each of you to
do. That includes submitting your paper and seeing how you start reviewing
the five papers the system assigns to you.
-
Your papers must be submitted by MIDNIGHT tonight!
Thursday, October 20. FALL BREAK
Tuesday, October 25. Paper
reviews from SWORD and getting ready for the Midterm
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Your reviews and comments on the five papers assigned to you must be
completed by class time today and properly posted in SWORD. We will
spend time talking about the process and trying to deal with any problems
that arose in this little experiment.
-
Preview of Test I
Practice Test. You should complete if for homework for the next class.
-
Survey Bid
Exercise and
Scoring Sheet
Thursday, October 27.
Midterm Practice Test
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Your ratings of the helpfulness of the comments given to you by your
SWORD reviewers is due today.
- We
will go over your midterm practice test that you completed for homework
today.
-
Here is your Midterm
Exam in MS Word format. Please print it and fill
in or type in the answers. It will be due by class time (1:40
pm) on Tuesday November 1, your next regular class.
Tuesday, Nov. 1.
Chapter 10. Surveys and Questionnaires. Data
Gathering--time to do our survey!
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
- Read
Chapter 10. Surveys and Questionnaires--different types, tradeoffs,
interviewer training and interviewer bias, question bias, and questionnaire
bias
- We will pretest the questionnaire that that
is based on the variables needed to test the hypotheses you have all chosen
(along with questions of interest to me). We will do this as a focus group,
which is often done in pretesting questionnaires.
- After class I will try to set up "Lime
Survey, the on-line package the university has, to send the survey out to
students. Hopefully I will have consulted with the right people here to get
that set up by today's date.
-
We will do a mock telephone interviewer
training session, so you will see how that is done. The face-to-face
interviews you are doing are easier.
- Listed below are the materials for previous
surveys for you to look at so you can see what previous classes have done.
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, so we had several different versions
to allow for different question orderings.
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) Aiken County 2005
Telephone Survey --
questionnaire
7) Aiken County 2006
Exit Survey --
questionnaire
8) Aiken County 2007
Telephone Survey --
questionnaire and
call sheet and
fallback
statements and
follow-up
questionnaire
9) Aiken County 2008
Exit Poll –
questionnaire
10)
Aiken County Survey Questionnaire 2009:
10-21-final copy –
fallback
statements
11) Aiken county 2010 Exit Survey
-- questionnaire
Here are some pictures of what was done in
the exit polls we did in previous years, and some of the press releases we
did.
2002
Exit Polling Pictures -- the class did well!
2004
Exit Polling Pictures -- again a job well done -- in the APLS 301 tradition!
2006
Exit Polling Pictures -- another great class effort!
2010 Exit Polling Pictures--a
great job by all!!
Midterm Due -- at
beginning of class
Thursday, Nov. 3. Coding Surveys and Chapter 11. Statistics. These kinds of statistics
helps us do analysis--what do we do with the data once it is completely gathered!
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Read Chapter 11, but but no homework
because we will be doing that next time after I go through these ideas.
-
We will do the Microcase exercises at the end of the chapter in class.
Tuesday, November 8. Chapter 12. Significance and Measures of
Association.
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
Read Chapter 12. 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.
- In-class exercises on calculating the chi
square statistic
- We will use MicroCase to produce measures of significance
and association for some crosstabulations to see if they are significant
and how strong they are using data from previous surveys or from our
survey if it is loaded on MicroCase in time
Thursday, November 10. Chi Square, continued
Note: you MUST have your SWORD "back reviews" of
the helpfulness of all the reviews done on your paper (not counting my review)
done by class today.
In-class activities and assignment for the
day.
-
More chi square exercises will be done in
class.
-
Homework
to be written up before class and turned
in. Write a draft of methodology section (Data gathering) for your papers
describing how our sample was constructed and how the surveys were
administered. Remember to put enough detail in so that someone else could
follow the steps you describe.
-
We will see where we are on our Lime Survey
effort and start dividing up non-respondents for you to try and get more of
our targeted interviews completed. This will count as five homework grades.
Your grade will depend on the percentage of the assigned interviews
completed--I may offer bonus S's on this. I will decide how this will work
when the time comes. Warning: though you may be tempted, DO NOT FAKE
INTERVIEWS. I will be spot checking to make sure and I usually can
spot a faked interview anyhow. This is a most serious honor code violation
and if you try this, you will fail the course automatically. Hopefully
most people will just do them online so this will not be an issue!
Tuesday, November 15. Continuing Work on your Research Paper and
More Practice on using Statistics and Significance
Assignments
and activities:
-
In-class exercises. We will test some more hypotheses and interpret
significances and I will introduce the next and last chapter on control
variables.
Thursday, November 17. Chapter 13. Controls on Crosstabs
In-class activities and homework assignment for the
day.
-
Read Chapter 13.
- In-class exercises. We will work on some
exercises looking at the possible impacts a control variable could have on
a relationship. Here is a summary of the general possibilities:
1) no
impact, i.e. the original bivariate relationship is not affected by the
control variable,
2) a confounding effect that makes the original relationship spurious (that
is, the relationship disappears in the control tables),
3) conditioning, which means that different
values of the control variable produces different relationships between
the independent and the dependent variable, and
4) the control variable
acts as an intervening variable between the independent and the
dependent variable (this will appear like it is spurious in that the
relationship will disappear in the control tables, but you know from your
theory that the direction of the arrow is from the independent to the
control variable rather than from the control to the independent).
Here are some press releases that previous classes
have done. You get spared from that this year--lucky you!
Press Release of the 2004 Exit Poll
Press Release of the 2005
Telephone Survey
Press Release of the 2006 Exit Poll
Press Release of the 2007
Telephone Surveyl
Press Release of the 2008 Exit Poll
Press Release of the 2009
Telephone Survey
Press Release of the
2010 Exit Poll
All
of you are working on completing your required and extra credit interviews.
Continue to do this over break and we will evaluate where we are after
Thanksgiving. Later that week I will have them all loaded on Microcaase so
that you can begin your actual analysis.
Tuesday, Nov. 22. No class --
continue working to get the interviews done and on editing your research
papers to work in suggested changes from SWORD. .
Thursday Nov. 25. Thanksgiving!
My favorite holiday of the year!
Tuesday, Nov. 29. Analysis presentations
In-class activities and homework assignment for the
day.
- Presentation of your
hypothesis and how you will create any compound variables and test both
the bivariate analysis and control variable analysis to the class. We
will all critique each other's work here.
- We will discuss what you need to do in
the theory reformulation part of the paper and get a rough draft of that
so that you can complete it after your analysis is done.
Thursday Dec. 1. Final advice and help on Research Paper and the
Final Exam
In class activities
Final Exam and Research Papers DUE Friday December 9 at 12 noon. -- no
exceptions!! Late papers will be severely penalized.
last updated on 11/18/2011
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