This is a practical course in how to begin, carry out and complete a research study in social science and related humanities fields. It is intended for Senior Thesis students though other students may be encouraged to take it where appropriate. It will be taught in an interdisciplinary way, appropriate to fields such as sociology, political science, social psychology, history, anthropology, international relations, economics and humanities. Students will learn how to develop a research project, how to develop a research question that allows for concrete research, how to identify the kinds of sources – quantitative or qualitative, historical or journalistic, field research or archival – appropriate to answering his or her question. Students will learn how to think about truth claims of research methods, how to judge “facts”, how to operationalize concepts so that they may be studied in a meaningful way, how to identify independent and dependent variables, and how to determine causality. In addition, students will have practice in how to conduct interviews, how to develop survey and life history questionnaires, how to engage in observation, how to judge primary and secondary sources, and how to think about paradigms, epistemologies and theories as basic tools of research projects. Ethical issues involved with research will also be explored. The class will also study how to do research systematically and efficiently on the internet. Students will, by the end of the course, carry through an original research project of their choosing, meeting specific time deadlines for each stage of the project and will present the project to the class at the end of the semester using powerpoint technology and other appropriate methods of presentation.

The course will be a step-by-step approach to research design. Beginning with a general approach to how we know what we know and to the role of paradigms and theories in constructing research questions, the course will then turn to ethical issues involved in human and social research. We will then look in-depth at research design as a holistic approach and to conceptualization and operationalization as indispensable phases of research, allowing us to concretely study virtually any question related to society and to human affairs imaginable, so long as our question and our categories are constructed precisely enough. We will then discuss how to collect data of various types, how to “interrogate” data, choosing the best method for doing so with different kinds of data.

The course will be primarily focused on qualitative approaches, particularly of use to students of Political Science, International Affairs, History, Sociology and related fields, but will also include some introduction to the use of and ability to understand quantitative approaches, as well as mixed approaches to research. Students will be considered primarily as consumers of statistics, rather than producers of them, but we will also explore how quantitative data are generated. Questions of how to study cultural questions, community and ethnographic studies, and participant observation will be covered. We will also look at journalistic and historical approaches to research. We will spend the last part of the course learning about how to write properly, how to cite and how to present one’s work.

Students will follow a firm schedule for developing their research project for the course, will meet firm deadlines for topics, preferred method of study, literature review, identification of appropriate data sources and their availability, operationalization of concepts, commencement of research activity and data collection, and presentation of the project to the class.

Students, upon completing the course, will be able to construct a research project and present it in writing and orally using power point and other tools. Students will be able to develop relevant questions on issues of social and historical interest, to determine the best method for going about answering their questions, to identify key variables, to identify data sources and analyze such data using appropriate methods.

Students will learn how to:

• do a literature review of a social or historical question using published academic sources
• find appropriate data sources in libraries, on the internet, in archives and in newspapers and journals
• think in an informed way about paradigms, epistemologies and theories as research tools
• consider in a professional manner the ethical considerations involved in a research project
• identify the truth claims of an analysis whether official, academic, advertising or journalistic
• identify independent and dependent variables and determine their relation to one another using a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods
• judge how statistics are used to make truth claims
• identify theoretical and methodological underpinnings of arguments made in research studies
• determine how polls and surveys are constructed and carried out
• construct an argument
• develop a research design of one’s own and carry it through from start to finish – that is from initial formulation of a question and a hypothesis and literature review to written publication and public presentation
• write in a manner that conveys the argument students want to make
• present such projects coherently using appropriate tools.

Attendance and participation: raises or lowers grade by maximum of 5% (ie B+ becomes B) Class participation will be assessed based upon attendance, quantity and quality of comments made as part of class discussion.

Attendance is mandatory and, alongside active participation in class (see grading criteria above).

Please refer to the university catalog for the attendance and absence policy.

Letter grades and corresponding percentages for this class

94 – 100 points = A

90 – 93.99 pts = A-

87 – 89.99 = B+

83 – 86.99 = B

80 – 82.99 = B-

77 – 79.99 = C+

70 – 76.99 = C

60 – 69.99 = D

59.99 – 0 = F