Research Methods in Political Science
This module introduces students to the philosophy and practice of social science and to commonly used statistical techniques in political science research. Students will learn how to pose interesting, answerable, and focused research questions, develop answers by generating theory-driven hypotheses, operationalize concepts, construct valid and reliable measures, and finally work with data. The module will cover quantitative methods, including basic statistical analysis, from describing and visualizing patterns in numerical data to regression analysis. Students will also be introduced to statistical programming for research in political science.
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Who teaches it
Named by students in their reviews. These ratings cover this module only, and don't count towards its overall score.
- Samuel BrazysNot matched to the catalogue
2.0Poor teaching2 ratings · Spring 2024/25 – Spring 2025/26
Reviews(2)
Anonymous Student
Sep 23, 2026
In practice
All the material was taught through recorded lectures that you had to watch in your own time. The in-class time was for answering PollEverywhere questions which counted towards your final grade. The material was not particularly difficult but if you let a backlog of video lectures build up then it will become very stressful (I would know).
Advice
Rack up as many attendance marks (quizzes, tutorials, etc) as you can. Brazys offers to write letters of recommendation to anyone with a grade above A-
Anonymous Student
Sep 22, 2026
In practice
One lecture a week, and one tutorial lab. One of the lectures was just the lecturer showing us how to use ChatGPT to code
Advice
I’m not sure what the module is like now but I would suggest doing the coding exercises if they still have them. The extra credit was very needed by the end
Assessment & grading
We had extra credit assignments worth 3 marks each. They were coding assignments. One thing about the research essay that I didn’t like was that the type of method you chose limited the grade you could get. So you would either choose a grade A method or Grade C etc. And even if you did an amazing grade c methodology, you couldn’t go above a C. It was weird
Content & usefulness
It was mostly the lecturer telling us to use AI to code 😭😭