INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION:

James M. Carlson, Professor of Political Science
Office Hours: 9:30-10:30 MWF or by appointment
Office: 310 Howley Hall
Office Telephone and Voice Mail: 865-2624
Fax Number: 865-1222
E-Mail: jcarlson@providence.edu
Carlson Home page: http://www.providence.edu/polisci/carlson
Angel Course Management System: http://angel.providence.edu/frameIndex.htm
DEPR student web site: http://college.hmco.com/polisci/carlson/depr/1e/students/index.html

COURSE INFORMATION:

Students for whom course is intended: This course is open to all PC students. It is the second course in the core sequence for political science majors. It also satisfies the research methods requirement for Social Science majors and the Social Science core requirements for all students.

Course Rationale and Goals: The goal of the course is to develop in students the ability to think systematically about politics and learn some skills that will enable them to use social scientific methods to execute a research project. After completion of the course students should be able to critically analyze arguments that rely on support of empirical data and are presented in popular and professional publications.

Specific Objectives: When students complete the course they should be able to: (1) Read systematically and critically analyze data based articles found in the literature of social science, (2) Formulate a political question that can be answered using an empirical approach, (3) Reformulate the question into a testable hypothesis, (4) Collect and analyze the information (data) necessary to determine the truth or falsity of the hypothesis. To accomplish the above objectives students should become familiar with the resources in the library and available on the internet and develop some elementary skills using data analysis.

Relationship of the Course to Program Goals: Fulfills a core requirement for the political science major. It is also a prerequisite for many upper division courses in political science. In other words the skills and knowledge developed in the course serve as a basis for learning in upper level courses.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Class Time

We will meet together about forty times this semester. I believe that learning is best accomplished by activity and practice. In other words to encourage you to think and learn, I will require you to work. This is a class where effort, more than innate ability, will pay off. I will provide you with a wide variety of activities that will be completed both inside and outside of the classroom. Generally, the greater your participation the more you will learn, and the higher your grade will be. Activities and exercises can be found on the Doing Empirical Political Research Web Site. I urge you to bring your textbook to class each day.

Examinations

We will have three examinations including a final. The questions on the exams will closely mirror those found in exercises and activities we discuss in class.

Analytical Paper

Each student will write a paper that reports the development and test of a hypothesis. We will discuss this project in detail early in the semester.

Activities and Exercises

You should complete all the activities and exercises indicated on the course calendar. We will discuss those activities on the indicated days. I will collect and grade some of them during the semester.

On-line Discussions on Angel

In each chapter of the text there are Questions for Thought and Discussion. Nearly every week I will post a question on our Angel site for you to discuss on-line.

Grading Distribution and Policies

Exercises, class work and participation 15%
Two one-hour examinations 30%
Analytical paper 30%
Final examination 25%

A complete description of my grading policies can be found at http://www.providence.edu/polisci/carlson/academpol.html and linked to our Angel site.

RESOURCES

The DEPR website and the Angel Course management system

Information contained in this syllabus along with homework assignments, discussion questions, and other resources can be found on the syllabus page for the course in Angel (See the link at the beginning of this syllabus). Exercises, activities and other resources such as practice tests can be found on the DEPR web site. We will take advantage of Angel’s bulletin board facilities for on-line discussions. If you wish you can submit your completed assignments electronically using Angel.

Text

James M. Carlson and Mark S. Hyde, Doing Empirical Political Research

Material Provided to You in the Form of Handouts:

Lloyd Etheredge, The Case of the Unreturned Cafeteria Trays

James M. Carlson, Gladys Ganiel, and Mark S. Hyde, “Scandal and Political Candidate Image”

There will likely be additional handouts.

Web Sources, Software, and Data Sets

You will make extensive use of the web site that accompanies DEPR. It contains practice tests, all of the activities and exercises, interactive applets, and links to materials that illustrate discussions and that should help you with your research.

The software we will learn is the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). It is available on the college computer laboratory server.

Five data sets that we will use for practice exercises and activities, as well as for analytical papers can be downloaded from the DEPR web site. They are also available on the Providence College (N: drive server).

COURSE SCHEDULE AND CLASS ASSIGNMENTS

Note: In addition to scheduled reading for each week you should be prepared to discuss the indicated Exercises and Activities. Exercises are found on the DEPR web site while activities are found both at the end of the DEPR chapters and on the web site. The following schedule is tentative. Check for changes on Angel.

Week of January 16 (two days)
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 1, How Do We Know What’s True
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercise 1.1 (question 1) and Activity 1.2 (questions 1 and 2)

Week of January 23
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 2, Using Scientific Method in Political Science
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercise 2.2; Activities 2.2 and 2.3

Week of January 30
Reading: Carlson/Hyde Chapter 3, Problem Formulation, Hypotheses, and the Building Blocks of Political Science Research
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 3.1, 3.3, and 3.4; Activities 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5.

Week of February 6
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 4, Building a Bibliography
Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 5, Reviewing Previous Research
In Class Exercises and Activities: Activities 4.1 and 4.3
Field Trip to the Library

Week of February 13
Hand in Activity 4.3 on February 12
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 6, Assessing Relationships and Causality
Etheredge, The Case of the Unreturned Cafeteria Trays
First Exam on February 17
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 6.1, 6.3, 6.5.

Week of February 20 (two days)
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 7, Conceptualizing, Operationalizing and Measuring Variables
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 7.1, 7.2 and 7.4; Activities 7.1 and 7.2

Week of February 27
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 8, Organization and Management of Quantitative Data: Introduction to SPSS
Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 9, Representativeness: Sampling Units of Analysis
Field Trip to a Computer Lab
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 8.1. 8.2, 9.1 and 9.2; Activities 8.1 and 9.1

Week of March 13
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 10, Collecting Data using Surveys and Questionnaires.
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 10.1 and 10.2

Week of March 20
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 11, Collecting Data from Published Source
Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 12, Collecting Data from a Small Number of Subjects: Intensive Approaches
James M. Carlson, Gladys Ganiel, and Mark S. Hyde, “Scandal and Political Candidate Image”
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 11.2 and 12.1; Activities 12.2 and 12.4
Hand in Activity 11.2 on March 24

Week of March 27
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 13, Univariate Data Analysis and Descriptive Statistics
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 13.1 and 13.2; Activity 13.1 and 13.2

Week of April 3
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 14, Bivariate Analysis and Testing Hypotheses I
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercise 14.1; Activities 14.1, 14.2 and 14.3

Week of April 10 (two days)
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 15, Bivariate Analysis and Testing Hypotheses II
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 15.1 and 15.3; Activity 15.2
Second Exam on April 12

Week of April 18
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 16, Multivariate and Causal Analysis
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercises 16.1 and 16.2; Activities 16.1, 16.3 and 16.4

Week of April 24
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 17, Measurement of Risk: Tests of Significance
In Class Exercises and Activities: Activity 17.1

Week of May1
Reading: Carlson/Hyde, Chapter 18, Reporting Research Results
In Class Exercises and Activities: Exercise 18.5

Final Examination for Series F May 10, 1-3 PM
Final Examination for Series H May 16, 9-11 PM