Methods of Empirical Social Research

The course will cover, broadly:
* What is political science?
* Measurements, variables, probabilities and distributions
* Causality and causal inference
* Survey, field, and natural experiments
* Analyzing observational data
* Introduction to regression analysis
* Causal process tracing, case selection and other key issues in case study research
* Where data come from - survey research
* Uses and design of survey questionnaires
* Sampling for surveys and field research
* Non-positivist epistemology
Examples are drawn from across the empirical subfields of political science (domestic, comparative, and international relations)

The course seeks to introduce students to the major analytical methods for the empirical study of politics, including an intuitive understanding of statistics and an ability to implement basic statistical operations in statistical software, enable them to undertake a methodological assessment of existing research, and provide students with a set of tools for their own research.

There are no prerequisites for this course; recommended is an interest in a wide variety of political topics, unbashfully approach of active learning, interest in empirical methods.

The lecture serves two purposes. First, direct transfer of knowledge about theories and methods. Secondly, students are encouraged to participate in open discussions on the learning content. The sections (Übungen) put students in an active role: Methods will be applied to research questions and datasets related to politics.

Slides, handouts, exercise sheets, occasional whiteboard tasks

Readings will include: Pollock, Philip H. The Essentials of Political Analysis. 4th edition. (Los Angeles: Sage, 2012) und Bartels, Larry M. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Detailed reading list to be distributed at the first meeting of the class.

The grade for the course will be based on exercises (Übungsleistung). The written exercises allow students to demonstrate the deeper understanding that they have attained of the specific methods covered in lecture and section. They will be asked to show, for instance, that they understand both the potential for, and the limitations of, experiments and case studies for causal analysis of political phenomena, that they are able to solve tasks using statistical software and know how to evaluate statistical results. They also will show that they understand key aspects of survey research and how to develop a survey instrument suitable for research on important questions in politics.