How to social science 101 part 3
Channel: Kristi Winters
Date: 2016-05-12

Philosophies of science and social science part 3 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Quantitative Political Analysis
https://www.academia.edu/3510023/Philosophy_of_social_science_pt_1_

Course Aims and Objectives
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c6rzr7dpzk64sbb/How%20to%20social%20science%20101.docx?dl=0

This course introduces students to quantitative research methods. Students will be introduced to survey methodology and experimental research designs and will conduct their own projects using quantitative data. 
The course aims to teach students research methods, which will prepare them to undertake further independent research in the political and social sciences. It covers contemporary statistical methods and research techniques. By the end of the course students should be aware of a wide range of research resources and be able to perform quantitative analyses on a variety of data in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. Students should be able to interpret and write up results.

On successful completion of this module students are expected to:
• be aware of a wide range of research resources available to social scientists 
• be able to perform quantitative analyses on a variety of data in an intelligent and thoughtful manner 
• pick and apply research techniques that are suitable for the analysis of their own research problems 
• interpret and critique published research 
• write up and present the findings of quantitative analysis 
• be aware of debates around the applicability of quantitative and qualitative methods 

Topics to be covered include:
• Operationalisation of research questions 
• Hypothesis testing 
• Basic mathematics for social scientists 
• Experimental designs 
• Survey research 
• Descriptive statistics 
• OLS regression 
• Logistic regression 

Discussion question: ‘What is this thing called 'science’ and can we use it to study politics?

*Chalmers, A. (1982). What is This Thing Called Science? Milton Keynes: Open University Press. 
Hacking, Ian. (1975). The Emergence of Probability: a Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. London: Cambridge University Press. 
Hacking, Ian. (1990). The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
*D. Huff (1954) How to Lie With Statistics. London: Penguin.
J. F. Healey (1998 - fifth edition) Statistics: A Tool for Social Research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Gower, B. (1997). Scientific method: a historical and philosophical introduction. London New York: Routledge.
Bauer, H. (1994). Scientific literacy and the myth of the scientific method. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press. 
Carey, S. (1998). A beginners guide to scientific method. Belmont, CA London: Wadsworth.
Humphreys, P. (2004). Extending ourselves: computational science, empiricism and scientific method. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  
*Shapiro, Ian. (2002).  Problems, methods, and theories in the study of politics, or: What's wrong with Political Science and what to do about it. Political Theory, Vol. 30, No.4 . pp. 588-611.


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