Midterm! Flashcards
1
Q
What are the components of research design?
A
Research question, theory, data collection, data analysis
2
Q
What are the shared goals of Quantitative and Qualitative Research?
A
- Understanding how political phenomena works
- Describing social and political reality
- Answering questions about social and political reality
3
Q
What is Ontology?
A
- The Character of the world as it actually is
- The fundamental assumptions scholars make about the nature of the social and political world and especially about the nature of causal relationships within the world
4
Q
Epistemology
A
- Fundamental assumptions about what ‘counts’ as credible knowledge
- Includes assumptions about what methods are needed to accrue knowledge
- Standards for judging what makes knowledge valid, its scope of applicability
5
Q
Positivism
A
- Universal laws and principles exist and are discoverable for both the physical world and the social world
- Covering laws can be discovered through the application of human powers of reasoning and methodical, systematic observation
- Primacy given to the scientific method; facts derived from reason, logic, and sensory experience; clear distinction between facts and values
6
Q
Post-Positivism/Interpretivism
A
- Rejection of the ‘covering law’ assumptions embedded within positivism
- Highlights the limitations of the scientific method for studying social and political phenomena; challenges the fact-value distinction
- Focus instead of explaining specific phenomena, meaning making, understanding perspectives of those being studied
7
Q
What are the options for Combining Approaches?
A
- Qualitative research as a precursor to quantitative
- Quantitative research as precursor to qualitative
8
Q
What are the Goals of Political research?
A
- Answering questions about human beings lived reality
- Theory-testing
- Theory-building
-Plausibility probes - Producing policy relevant insights
8
Q
Goals of Positivist Research
A
- Descriptive inferences
- Causal (explanatory) inferences
8
Q
Goals of Interpretive Research
A
- Sympathetic understanding
- Understanding the ‘definition of the situation’
- Identifying ‘omitted variable’
8
Q
What should you consider when choosing a research topic?
A
- The impact of bias and lived experience
- Appropriate scope given time and resources
- Contributing to a shoclarly conversation
8
Q
What should all research projects do according to King, Keohance and Verba?
A
- Pose a question that is important and consequential in the real world
- Make a specific contribution to an identifiable scholarly literature by increasing our collective ability to construct verified scientific explanations of some aspect of the world
8
Q
How does theory affect research questions?
A
It affects the formulation of main questions
9
Q
Advice for Choosing Topics and Questions
A
- focus on topics and questions that interest you
- seek out topics and questions that are understudied
- engage with multiple theoretical perspectives
- seek feedback
- be flexible and willing to refine as you go
9
Q
What is Theory ?
A
A simplified model of how the world works
Explaining that concepts are related and why they are related
9
Q
Can theories be proven?
A
No - a theory is dynamic and constantly evolving based on new data
All theories have a degree of uncertainty
10
Q
What makes a good theory?
A
- Clear and concrete and offers specific predictions
- Generalizable
- Falsifiable
- Debates about Parsimony
10
Q
What does it mean for a theory to be clear and concrete?
A
- theories need to offer specific predictions about the world otherwise it is difficult to assess their merits or compare them to other theories
- translatable
10
Q
What does it mean for a theory to be generalizable?
A
- It extends beyond a particular event or singular context
- More useful when they explain multiple events
- It can travel
10
Q
What does it mean for a theory to be falsifiable?
A
- Always needs to entertain the idea that your is wrong
- Maximizing observable implications
- Going through many test to become more convincing
- Interpretivist would use probabilistic over falsifiable
10
Q
What are debates about parsimony?
A
- some argue that theories should be simple as possible, while others disagree
- they argue the world is more complicated than that
11
Q
What are Concepts?
A
- they allow us to classify and communicate phenomena
- allow for comparsion via categorization
- building blocks for theory
- theories make arguments about the relationship between concepts
12
Q
Types of Concepts
A
- Unidimensional
- Multidimensional
- Typologies
- Ranked on a continuum
13
Q
What is typology
A
A way of conceptualizing the world based on various types or traits based on their characteristics
13
What is Conceptual Stretching?
- Expanding the number of cases and observable cases as possible because sometimes there not many of a particular phenomena (I.E World Wars)
- Be careful though
13
What are measures?
- Measure link theory with empirical study ( Concepts are abstract)
- Measure are tools for obtaining observable evidence about the concepts of interest
13
What do you use conceptional definitions for?
- to select variables
13
What do you use indicators for?
- to locate individual cases among variables' different values
13
What is the criteria for assessing causality?
- Correlation, either positive or negative
- Temporal order, X precedes Y
- Absence of confounding variables
- Plausible causal mechanism
- Consistency
13
Advantages for Case Studies
- Case studies include both within case analysis cross case comparisons or both
- Strengths include conceptual validity, exploring causal mechanism, assessing complex causal relationships, deriving new hypotheses
14
What is a case?
- a case is an instance of a class or subclass of events
- a single event may be a case of many different things; scholars may study the same event but treat it as a case of different phenomena
15
What question should researchers be able to clearly answer?
What is this a case of?
16
What types of cases can the war in Ukraine be?
- Inter-state war
- Military occupation
- Annexation of territory
- Forced displacement
- Conscription
17
How do you Identify the ' Universe of Cases' ?
Refers to all the possible cases of a particular phenomenon
- you need a clear and specific definition of what counts as a case
18
What is selection bias?
- occurring when the non-random selection of cases results in inferences, based on the resulting sample, that are not statistically representative of the population
19
Qualitative research and selection bias
- concerns about scholars cherry picking cases, over representing cases at one end of the distribution on a key variable
- Potentially overstating strength of causal relationships between variables
20
What is Qualitative Comparative Analysis?
- Offers a middle ground between quantitative and qualitative analysis
- Based on set theory; relationship of conditions to outcomes
- Focus on complex causal relationships, necessary and sufficient conditions
- Allows for equifinality bit requires inclusion of all causally relevant variables, findings can be unstable
21
What are Case Studies?
- a case study is a "well defined aspect of a historical episode that the investigator selects for analysis"
22
What are advantages of case studies?
- conceptual validity
- exploring causal mechanism
- assessing complex causal relationships
- deriving new hypotheses, alternative explanations for observed phenomena
23
What is conceptual validity?
- identify and measure the indicators that best measure and represent theoretical concepts the researcher wants to measure
24
What are the limitations of case studies?
- case selection bias
- scope conditions and necessity vs assessing strength of causal relationships
- the degree of freedom problem
- lack of representativeness
- single-case research designs
- potential lack of independence of cases
25
What are research objectives of case studies?
- a theoretical/configurative idiographic
- disciplined configurative
- heuristic
- theory testing
- plausibility probes
- building block studies
26
A theoretical/Configurative idiographic
- Deep dive in the archives
- Description of what happened
- Rich data
27
Disciplined configurative
- taking a theory that already exist and using it and applying it to a particular case
28
Heuristic
- inductively looking for new variables, mechanism, causal pathways
- going in with an open mind
- what seems to matter most hear
- develop new hypotheses on a particular event
29
Theory testing
- if it is a strong theory it should be able to explain what happen in this situation
- test theory against the evidence
30
Plausibility probes
- a mini case study to test out the theory before doing a deep dive
- a way of not wasting time
31
Building Block studies
- trying to identify common patterns in a existing phenomenon
32
Types of Cases
- Most likely case
- Least likely case
- Crucial case
- Most-similar systems
- Most different systems
33
Most-likely case
- based on what you about the theory you think its most likely it should be able to explain what happened here
34
Least likely case
- a hard test
least likely to explain the outcome
- make it seem more credible
35
Crucial case
- central to confirmation or disconfirmation of a deterministic theory
- if your theory is right, it should absolutely be able to explain the crucial case
- if not disproves the theory
- linked to falsification
36
Most-similar systems
- means we are missing something
- revisiting the cases
37
Most different systems
- vary different conditions and factors, similar outcomes
- might be able to identify a fourth factor that had not thought about
38
