Ce cours apparaît dans les formations suivantes :
• ESPOL - Licence 2 de Relations Internationales - S4 - 3 ECTS

Pré requis

Open to all L2 students

Objectifs du cours

This course guides you through the steps to set up a research design for an original research project. By the end of the course, you will have identified a research question; a hypothesis; specified and operationalized key concepts; an appropriate methodology; and cases in which to test your theory.

Contenu du cours

This is a seminar course in which students will learn by doing. Most seminars will follow the same format. First, I will present the main themes and ask some general questions related to the readings. Then, each student will present his or her research design progress, using the required reading to explain their decisions. Students will thus apply the insights and prescriptions presented in the book chapter to their own research question, conceptualisation, hypothesis, operationalisation, case selection, etc. This presentation should be short and clear at a maximum length of 5 minutes. We will then discuss students’ progress collectively. The goal is to go through the progress of each and every student’s research design every class. This means that – every week – students need to bring their ‘work in progress’ research design with them and be prepared to comment on the work of their colleagues based on the insights they gain from their readings.
Seminars 6 and 7 are in-class peer review days. Here, the rules change slightly. We will divide the research designs in two and students will be expected to read the research designs of half of their colleagues before each of these days. Every student will be assigned as discussant for one research design. This means that they will read it very carefully so that they can present it briefly to their classmates and give feedback to open the discussion. The amount of time dedicated to each paper will depend on the number of students in the class, but the goal is to divide the time evenly among the papers.

Modalités d'enseignement

Organisation du cours

Seminar format. Includes presentation of themes by teacher ; student presentations ; and discussions centered on students’ ongoing assignment.

Lecture ; Group learning ; Individual learning ; Inquiry-based learning

Contrôle continu (100%):

Presentation 1 – 15%

Presentation 2 – 15%

Final Project – 70%

Méthodes pédagogiques

Évaluation

Contrôle continu : coeff. 100

Bibliographie

• Toshkov, Dimiter (2016), Research Design in Political Science, London: Palgrave Macmillan., - Thomas Gschwend and Frank Schimmelfennig (Ed.) (2007), How to practice what they preach: Research Design in Political Science, London: Palgrave Macmillan., - Donna Della Porta and Michael Keating (Eds.) (2008), Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., - Scharpf, Fritz W., Social Science as a Vocation - Are Max Weber’s Warnings Still Valid?, EUI MWP LS, 2007/01 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/6959, - Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M., Henry E. Brady, and David Collier (Eds) (2009), The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, Oxford: Oxford University Press., - Gerring, John. 1999. “What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences.” Polity 31(3): 357–93., ,

Ressources internet

• None