Research Methods in Political Science

Politics & Int RelationsDr Giuseppe Zaccaria5 creditsSpringBlended

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 Brazys
Not matched to the catalogue
1.0Very poor teaching1 rating · Spring 2024/25

Reviews(1)

Anonymous Student

Sep 22, 2026

Would not recommend

Worth it:Barely worth itInterest:Very boring

Hours:10–12 h/wkDifficulty:Hard

Samuel BrazysTeaching:Very poor

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 😭😭

Spring 2024/25