PLSI300 – Political Science 300: Scientific Inquiry in Political Science

This course provides an introduction to research methods in the social sciences.  It will teach you how to design a research project, measure various social and political trends, and analyze and interpret political data.   The primary focus of this course is the process of empirical scientific political analysis. The class explores the logic and assumptions of the scientific method, research design, hypothesis testing, and statistical data analysis.  The course is divided into three sections.  The first section of the class provides an overview of major approaches to knowledge production and analysis in the political science discipline.  The second section introduces the building blocks of political analysis, exploring the process of developing a research question, measuring concepts, generating hypotheses, and exploring and describing data.  The third section of the class introduces basic inferential statistics as a tool for evaluating claims about the political process.  Throughout the semester, course labs will familiarize students with the practices of hands on political analysis, and will introduce students to SPSS, a popular statistical software package.

Contact: gboushey@sfsu.edu