All POLS 160 - Methods

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Data Management for Social Scientists
Data Management for Social Scientists

Nils B. Weidmann, Universität Konstanz, Germany The 'data revolution' offers many new opportunities for research in the social sciences. Increasingly, social and political interactions can be recorded digitally, leading to vast amounts of new [...]

License: CC BY-NC
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108990424
Type: Books
A Case for Description
A Case for Description

Abstract Descriptive research—work aimed at answering “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “how” questions—is vital at every stage of social scientific inquiry. The creative and analytic process of description—through concepts, measures, or cas [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096523000720
Type: Journal Articles
Evaluating Policy Mood Measures in the American States
Evaluating Policy Mood Measures in the American States

The scholarly exchange over approaches to measuring public preferences in the American states dates back several years. This introduction to the debate attempts to provide broad perspective on how scholars have conceptualized and measured poli [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/spq.2022.23
Type: Journal Articles
STADL Up! The Spatiotemporal Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model for TSCS Data Analysis
STADL Up! The Spatiotemporal Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model for TSCS Data Analysis

Time-series cross-section (TSCS) data are prevalent in political science, yet many distinct challenges presented by TSCS data remain underaddressed. We focus on how dependence in both space and time complicates estimating either spatial or tem [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000272
Type: Journal Articles
Elements of External Validity: Framework, Design, and Analysis
Elements of External Validity: Framework, Design, and Analysis

The external validity of causal findings is a focus of long-standing debates in the social sciences. Although the issue has been extensively studied at the conceptual level, in practice few empirical studies include an explicit analysis that i [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000880
Type: Journal Articles
Relaxing Assumptions, Improving Inference: Integrating Machine Learning and the Linear Regression
Relaxing Assumptions, Improving Inference: Integrating Machine Learning and the Linear Regression

Valid inference in an observational study requires a correct control specification, but a correct specification is never known. I introduce a method that constructs a control vector from the observed data that, when included in a linear regres [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422001022
Type: Journal Articles
Sources of evidence and openness in field-intensive research on violent conflict
Sources of evidence and openness in field-intensive research on violent conflict

This article engages with Steven Lubet’s arguments in Interrogating Ethnography on reliability of evidence and replication of findings in ethnographic research. It draws on eight months of immersive fieldwork on Abkhaz mobilization in the Geor [...]

License: CC BY-NC-ND
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2021.1950015
Type: Journal Articles
Trying Lubet’s ethnography: On methodology, writing, and ethics
Trying Lubet’s ethnography: On methodology, writing, and ethics

By the early 2000s, immersed in fieldwork methods literatures (participant-observer ethnography, interviewing, and document-based research), I increasingly saw that “evidence” meant something different in different research and professional pr [...]

License: CC BY-NC-ND
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2021.1963993
Type: Journal Articles
Ethnography on Trial: Introduction to the Dialogue
Ethnography on Trial: Introduction to the Dialogue

While [ethnographers] do seek to uncover the rules of action, such rules are not as clearly discoverable as law is to lawyers – through examination of definitive statements. Most rules of social behavior are tacit and unstated. Frequently they [...]

License: CC BY-NC-ND
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2021.1963992
Type: Journal Articles
The Case for Case Studies
The Case for Case Studies

This book seeks to narrow two gaps: first, between the widespread use of case studies and their frequently 'loose' methodological moorings; and second, between the scholarly community advancing methodological frontiers in case study research a [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108688253
Type: Books
Generative Dynamics of Supreme Court Citations: Analysis with a New Statistical Network Model
Generative Dynamics of Supreme Court Citations: Analysis with a New Statistical Network Model

Abstract The significance and influence of U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions derive in large part from opinions’ roles as precedents for future opinions. A growing body of literature seeks to understand what drives the use of opinions as pr [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.20
Type: Journal Articles
How Populist are Parties? Measuring Degrees of Populism in Party Manifestos Using Supervised Machine Learning
How Populist are Parties? Measuring Degrees of Populism in Party Manifestos Using Supervised Machine Learning

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.29
Type: Journal Articles
Human Rights Violations in Space: Assessing the External Validity of Machine-Geocoded versus Human-Geocoded Data
Human Rights Violations in Space: Assessing the External Validity of Machine-Geocoded versus Human-Geocoded Data

Abstract Political event data are widely used in studies of political violence. Recent years have seen notable advances in the automated coding of political event data from international news sources. Yet, the validity of machine-coded event d [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.40
Type: Journal Articles
Can Appeals for Peace Promote Tolerance and Mitigate Support for Extremism? Evidence from an Experiment with Adolescents in Burkina Faso
Can Appeals for Peace Promote Tolerance and Mitigate Support for Extremism? Evidence from an Experiment with Adolescents in Burkina Faso

Abstract Recent efforts to improve attitudes toward outgroups and reduce support for extremists in violent settings report mixed results. Donors and aid organizations have spent millions of dollars to amplify the voices of moderate religious f [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2022.1
Type: Journal Articles
Can Policy Responses to Pandemics Reduce Mass Fear?
Can Policy Responses to Pandemics Reduce Mass Fear?

Abstract To successfully address large-scale public health threats such as the novel coronavirus outbreak, policymakers need to limit feelings of fear that threaten social order and political stability. We study how policy responses to an infe [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2022.7
Type: Journal Articles
Introduction to College Research
Introduction to College Research

Why This Book? The key to success in college research is to develop and hone your information literacy skills. These skills will prepare you to find and use information not only for college, but also in the workplace and your personal life. Ha [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://introtocollegeresearch.pressbooks.com/
Type: Textbooks
A Dynamic Model of Speech for the Social Sciences
A Dynamic Model of Speech for the Social Sciences

Abstract: Speech and dialogue are the heart of politics: nearly every political institution in the world involves verbal communication. Yet vast literatures on political communication focus almost exclusively on what words were spoken, entirel [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305542000101X
Type: Journal Articles
The gendered politics of researching military policy in the age of the ‘knowledge economy’
The gendered politics of researching military policy in the age of the ‘knowledge economy’

Abstract: This article explores our experiences of conducting feminist interpretive research on the British Army Reserves. The project, which examined the everyday work-Army-life balance challenges that reservists face, and the roles of their [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210521000036
Type: Journal Articles
Shadowing as a Tool for Studying Political Elites
Shadowing as a Tool for Studying Political Elites

Abstract: This article offers a description and discussion of “shadowing” as a data collection and analytic tool, highlighting potential research opportunities related to the direct observation of individuals—principally political elites—in th [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.14
Type: Journal Articles
Measuring Ethnic Bias: Can Misattribution-Based Tools from Social Psychology Reveal Group Biases that Economics Games Cannot?
Measuring Ethnic Bias: Can Misattribution-Based Tools from Social Psychology Reveal Group Biases that Economics Games Cannot?

Abstract: Economics games such as the Dictator and Public Goods Games have been widely used to measure ethnic bias in political science and economics. Yet these tools may fail to measure bias as intended because they are vulnerable to self-pre [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.37
Type: Journal Articles
Understanding, Choosing, and Unifying Multilevel and Fixed Effect Approaches
Understanding, Choosing, and Unifying Multilevel and Fixed Effect Approaches

Abstract: When working with grouped data, investigators may choose between “fixed effects” models (FE) with specialized (e.g., cluster-robust) standard errors, or “multilevel models” (MLMs) employing “random effects.” We review the claims give [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.41
Type: Journal Articles
Equivalence Testing for Regression Discontinuity Designs
Equivalence Testing for Regression Discontinuity Designs

Abstract: Regression discontinuity (RD) designs are increasingly common in political science. They have many advantages, including a known and observable treatment assignment mechanism. The literature has emphasized the need for “falsification [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.43
Type: Journal Articles
Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts
Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts

Abstract: Scholars estimating policy positions from political texts typically code words or sentences and then build left-right policy scales based on the relative frequencies of text units coded into different categories. Here we reexamine su [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-9162.2010.00006.x
Type: Journal Articles
Hot Politics? Affective Responses to Political Rhetoric
Hot Politics? Affective Responses to Political Rhetoric

Abstract: Canonical theories of opinion formation attribute an important role to affect. But how and for whom affect matters is theoretically underdeveloped. We establish the circumplex model in political science as a theory of core affect. In [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000519
Type: Journal Articles