Research Design in Political Science: How to Practice What They Preach

Front Matter....Pages i-xi
Introduction: Designing Research in Political Science — A Dialogue between Theory and Data....Pages 1-18
Front Matter....Pages 19-19
Increasing the Relevance of Research Questions: Considerations on Theoretical and Social Relevance in Political Science....Pages 21-38
Front Matter....Pages 39-39
Concept Specification in Political Science Research....Pages 41-61
Typologies in Social Inquiry....Pages 62-79
Front Matter....Pages 81-81
Making Measures Capture Concepts: Tools for Securing Correspondence between Theoretical Ideas and Observations....Pages 83-102
Achieving Comparability of Secondary Data....Pages 103-124
Front Matter....Pages 125-125
Dealing Effectively with Selection Bias in Large-n Research....Pages 127-144
Case Selection and Selection Bias in Small-n Research....Pages 145-160
Front Matter....Pages 161-161
Selecting Independent Variables: Competing Recommendations for Factor-Centric and Outcome-Centric Research Designs....Pages 163-182
Discriminating among Rival Explanations: Some Tools for Small-n Researchers....Pages 183-200
Front Matter....Pages 201-201
Falsification in Theory-Guided Empirical Social Research: How to Change a Tire while Riding Your Bicycle....Pages 203-215
Conclusion: Lessons for the Dialogue between Theory and Data....Pages 216-225
Back Matter....Pages 226-243