Political Science Writing Assignment (Democratic Ideal)
This assignment will require you to utilize and engage the previous fundamentals we have covered in this course with specific techniques for a hypothetical qualitative research design as covered in Chapters 7 and 8.
1. Through the LMU Library Database, locate three political journal articles on a similar topic. You are free to use any database available through the LMU Library (attached below). In no more than two paragraphs, state what the thesis of each piece is. (i.e. “Jones argues…”), and then briefly (very briefly) discuss how each piece speaks to each other. A tip: Don’t fall down a rabbit hole for this part; the goal here is to just get some repetitions in for sourcing and synthesizing literature. That’s it.
2. Based off your topic and resources, write one empirical political science research question that you believe could further our under standing of the topic.
3. Write one testable political science hypothesis on your research question.
3. Outline one hypothetical qualitative political science research study that could test your hypothesis. Outlined below are ruled you must adhere to, but remember this is completely hypothetical and you will not actually be conducting the study:
A: You are free to pick any of the methods from chapters 7 or 8 except Document Analysis (i.e. Process Tracing, Ethnography, Participant Observation…etc). The main purpose of this assignment is to encourage all of you to stretch yourselves in a Methodology other than Document Analysis, and to do so within something realistic.
B: You must design the study so that it can be completed within one semester for a Political Science course at the university. You are free to use any course of your choosing that falls under the department curriculum. As in, imagine a scenario where you are perhaps writing a semester-long paper for an upper division course, and you have an entire semester to conduct qualitative research through any of the techniques in Chapters 7 and 8 except Document Analysis. How would you do it?
Some tips: The more specific you are, the better. Explain the who, what, where, why, how, and when of your study. Explain why it is a realistic assignment to complete for a LMU course. And most importantly, explain the importance of what you believe it will add to the existing body of literature.
Formatting and citation decisions are left to your own discretions, however do be sure to follow some sort of professional guidelines (i.e. APA, Chicago style).
I would like all of you to please stretch yourselves and build off of everything you have done so far in this course. By the end of this assignment, my hope is that all of you will recall and integrate your early research steps with more precision, link together those steps with the ability to specifically test hypotheses through social science techniques, and start thinking of ideas for future research projects.
