Syllabus

General Research Seminar 

E. Melanie DuPuis

Classroom: 317 UCDC

Office: Room 322 UCDC

Phone: 202-974-6372

melanie.dupuis@ucsc.edu

Office Hours: Tues - Thurs 6-7:30

Office hour sign up here.

"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.”

                                               --Anne Lamott

How do we figure things out?  How do we ask questions about the world? In your internships, you will be having new experiences and be exposed to new ideas.  You will come up against the contradictions and complexities of the real political world.  Out of this experience come questions.  How can you make observations about the world that yield defendable answers to important questions?  How can those answers  lead to better political decisions and enable us to be more effective actors in the world?

In this class, you will learn The Art of Inquiry, a useful skill both in your professional life and your membership as a citizen of a polity.  The Art of Inquiry involves how to ask questions and be skeptical of previous answers to this question (including your own).  A good inquirer, the researcher, is a designer of new questions that yield convincing answers.  The skill of research design, like any other kind of design, is therefore an innovative, creative, even artistic process. And like other kinds of design, a good one works well and a bad one will not lead to accurate conclusions.  Bad designs just confirm preconceived notions about the world. This course will teach you The Art of Inquiry, guiding you through the five steps of a rigorous academic research project that help you ask the kind of questions that, if you are successful, will yield surprising, complex answers about the world.  

This is your opportunity to not only be part of the experience in the political process in DC but also to learn something new by practicing The Art of Inquiry while you are here.  You will learn something about asking good questions, getting good answers and then thinking about how those good answers lead to better actions.

Ethical Conduct:

Please review the Code of Conduct for this class.  These are from the UCSC rules of ethics, but your own campus follows rules that are closely similar.  This code includes standards concerning the academic work you do, including the requirement that your work be original, written for this class (with exceptions discussed with the professor ahead of time) and not plagiarized from other sources. All work will be turned into Turnitin.com.

Please also review the UCSC Principles of Community, which will hopefully describe how members of this classroom community treat each other. The key word is "respect."  We will also review this article on business etiquette during the first class.

GRADING

See the Grading, Paper Outline and Research Design Steps section of the class blog.  Your final product for this class is a 20-25 page original research paper citing at least 20 sources.

READING

Required: Booth et al., The Craft of Research (3rd edition)
Other readings are in links or will be assigned based on the type of research study you pursue.

SCHEDULE

[1/11]Week One – Discovering your Topic Area

You have chosen an internship based on a passionate curiosity about how some part of Washington works.  You have arrived in this City with some real questions and, hopefully, your internship experience will help you answer some of these questions.  During this class period, we will begin by asking you to talk about the area of your passionate curiosity – that is, your “topic area” -- and how your passion influenced your choice to come to DC and your choice of internship. 

We will then do an overview of the course.  Using one or two topic areas, we will look over the Research Design Steps and ask how research design can help you answer a question that you are passionate about.

We will do an ungraded memo exercise.

Finally, you will choose a general topic area, either from the Topic Areas List or some other topic that you can work together on as a group.

[1/18]Week Two -- Step 2: Understanding the Debate

Passionate topics are also debated topics.  How do you go about exploring a major debate in a particular topic area?  Inquiry as an art requires skepticism along with passion.  That is, you should be passionate about your question but skeptical about all possible answers at this point.  But this skepticism should lead you to explore the various arguments in the major debates about your topic.  Soon, you will need to narrow your question but at this point, you should explore major perspectives on your topic area so that you can focus down to your more narrow question from a broader perspective.

You will then separate into major Topic Groups for the following week’s assignment.  We will look at how to find sources that can provide arguments about a particular debate.

Read Booth et al. (3rd edition) The Craft of Research pp. 35-63.
and 
http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review

[1/25]Week Three -- Step 3: Forming Your Question

This week, Topic Groups will present on the major debate in their topic area.   The group will come to class with three powerpoint slides that answer the following questions.  (1) what is my topic area? (2) what are the different perspectives, and big questions related to my topic? (3) what is my question? and (4) how does my question contribute to understanding bigger questions? 

Read Booth et al. The Craft of Research 64-138.

[2/1]Week Four -- Step 4: Measurement and Bias

Academic researchers make arguments based on evidence.  However, how one goes about asking a question and answering it is tricky.  While bias is unavoidable, a skeptical researcher is always aware of his or her own criteria and reflectively working to eliminate the bias associated with ones own point of view.  

While anyone can make a claim of fact, researchers do so based on three formal rules of measurement: sampling, validity and reliability.  We will look at a a few academic articles and see how they follow the rules of academic research.  We will talk about what we will need to do to follow these rules in our own research papers.

We will start by looking at the measure concept "validity" and why understanding this concept is so important. 

First read Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kaheman's article on why people are overconfident about what is true. Then read this New Yorker article about bias in a capital punishment case.   Then look at three different explanations of sampling, construct, internal and external validity and reliability.  Make sure you can explain each of these measurement concepts.

Measurement – trickier than it seems:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/measure.php

Sampling – picking what you study:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/sampling.php

Validity – attempting to lessen bias:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/introval.php

Then we will look at how Obama's campaign staff used data to help him win the election:

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508836/how-obama-used-big-data-to-rally-voters-part-1/

[2/8]Week 5: Step 5: Research Design: Group Meetings

This week, Topic Groups will meet with me separately.  You will come prepared to present to the smaller group a more narrow research question that you are hoping to explore in your paper. You will also write up your research question in a 3-5 page document draft of steps 1-3.

REQUIRED: Office hour meeting with me.

Chose a reading explaining one of the following research designs:

• case studies
• policy analysis
• surveys
• archival analysis
• data analysis

Come to the meeting prepared to talk about your proposed research design.

[2/15]Week 6 -- no class -- required office hour meeting

[2/22]Week 7 -- Steps 1-5 Drafts due

UC/UCDC alumni panel on how they use their research skills in their current jobs. 

[3/1]Week Eight -- Conclusions

We will read an article on policy options (TBA) and talk about the policy options section of applied papers. We will talk about analyzing data, drawing conclusions and generalizations.  The last hour those giving presentations in Week 9 will have presentation training

[3/8]Week 9: Presentations I

And presentation training for students giving presentations in Week 10.

[3/15]Week 10: Presentations 2