A1: Research Questions

Published

September 30, 2024

Overview

Welcome to your groups for POLS 1140. Over the course of the semester, you will:

  1. Identify a topic and question of common interest (Section: February 22, Assignment: February 26)
  2. Design a survey to address this topic (Section: March 1, Due March 5)
  3. Discuss how you will analyze your results (March 5)
  4. Prepare and present those results to the class (April 8)

Research questions

Coming up with a good research question is HARD. It takes lots of practice, revisions, and thinking. Sometimes what we think we’re asking differs from what our data and methods actually allow us to answer. Doing this collectively creates some additional challenges and opportunities. You have to be willing to compromise, listen, and adapt (all useful life skills). Frequent communication, defining roles and setting clear actionable tasks will help. We’ll try to help you along the way, but as with many things in this course, you get out of it, what you put in.

Schedule for Wednesday Section:

Before Section:

  • Respond to the email assigning you groups (including your professor on that response)
  • Be thinking about a topic area and research question you’d like to explore with your group.
    • You can share your thoughts via email, or save them for section
    • You might find an article or survey you interesting to motivate discussion.

Section:

Introductions (~5 minutes)**

  • Who are you
  • What interests you about public opinion

Write down a research question and a few notes about that question (3-5 minutes individual work)

  • You should be able to state your question in single sentence, and offer a few comments about why you find this question interesting and important
  • Typically, we think about questions in terms of the kind of inferences we will draw from the data. They may be:
    • Descriptive: “How could we measure sexual frustration”
    • Predictive*: “How do people high on sexual frustration tend to vote”
    • Casual: “Does the effect of female candidate’s campaign ad vary by levels of sexual frustration”
  • Think about how your question might be rephrased/reframed.
    • If you question is descriptive, think about conceptual what you’re trying to measure, and why it’s important to measure the thing you’re interested. Do you think sexual frustration explains political behavior, or are you really interested say in something like hostile sexism used by Valentino et al. (2018)
    • If your question is predictive, think about factors that vary with both your outcome and key predictor, things that a critic might offer as an alternative explanation for the relationship you hope to uncover.
    • If your question is causal, think about the relevant counterfactual comparisons you would need to make.
  • Don’t worry about having a perfect research question at the start of the class – again this takes time and revision.

Share and discuss your research questions (20 minutes, roughly 4-5 minutes per question)

  • Share what you’ve written with the group, perhaps go around, quickly and have everyone share there 1-sentence question, and let the conversation evolve from there
  • Think about questions in terms of there:
    • Interest to your group
    • Their importance to study of public opinion and democracy
    • Their feasibility
  • Be respectful, helpful, and mindful of the time you spend talking relative to the time you spend listening and thinking.

Come to collective consensus about a single topic and general question you’d like to pursue (10 minutes)

  • By the end of class your group most identify a general topic you would like to study with a survey and at least one, or perhaps several questions you would like to pursue.
  • You don’t have to have everything nailed down, but you should have a topic that you collectively find interesting and fun.

Summarize your discussion in a 1-page memo (Rest of section, to be completed by Sunday, October 6, 2024)

Your group must submit a 1-page memo that:

  • Identifies a broad topic of interest
    • “Sexism and politics”
  • Summarizes your proposed research question and motivation
    • We are interested in how sexism shapes the dynamics of the 2024 Election. Specifically, we hope to assess whether the voters are more or less supportive of the same policy positions when they are ascribed to male or female presidential candidates…
  • Identifies the primary outcome of interest for your project
    • Support for policies and candidates measured using 7-point scales (but use complete sentences please.)
  • Discusses some factors that might predict or explain variation in that outcome
    • Gender, modern sexism scales.

You can find a template for this memo

After Class

  • Continue talking as you collectively fill out your memo.
  • Settle on a topic area and general research question
  • Think about ways to measure your outcomes and key predictors
  • Have one person submit this document by Midnight, October 6, 2024