Research training: Scope and methods
Class description
In 2026 I taught this crosslisted class (POLS4011/POLS8058) on research design for honours, MA, and PhD students. The course introduces students to advanced methodological debates and research design, and it is built to help apprentice researchers turn a question into a defensible project and, ultimately, a thesis.
The course is organised around a single question: how do we pose questions and design our research to make valid descriptive and causal inferences? My aim is to help students move from knowing to judging, and from the what to the why (and why not). Rather than revisiting the basics of concepts, variables, and hypotheses, we focus on choosing among defensible options: developing research questions and puzzles, defining and measuring concepts, selecting cases and setting scope conditions, identifying threats to inference, and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different methodological approaches.
Because the class brings together students at different stages, it is designed around common intellectual tasks with differentiated expectations, assessment criteria, and deliverables. All students learn to design a coherent, defensible research strategy, identify threats to inference, and justify their choices of concepts, cases, and methods. MA and PhD students additionally evaluate alternative designs and justify their rejection, engage directly with methodological literatures, and position their research within disciplinary debates. The semester is run as facilitated discussion rather than lecture, and the assessments are deliberately sequenced as steppingstones toward each student’s thesis.
Assessment
Assessment is built around each student’s own research project: a research design memo (20%, Week 3), a critical review of a published article (20%, Week 6), a research design presentation (10%, Weeks 11 and 12), a research design paper (40%, due at the end of semester), and class participation (10%).
| Week | Weekly topic (2026) | Reading notes, lecture notes |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Course introduction | Week 1 notes |
| Week 2 | The art of the possible | Week 2 notes |
| Week 3 | Concepts under pressure, part 1 | Week 3 notes |
| Week 4 | Concepts under pressure, part 2 | Week 4 notes |
| Week 5 | Case selection and scope, part 1 | Week 5 notes |
| Week 6 | Case selection and scope, part 2 | Week 6 notes |
| Week 7 | Causal inference, part 1 | Week 7 notes |
| Week 8 | Causal inference, part 2 | Week 8 notes |
| Week 9 | When things fall apart, part 1 | Week 9 notes |
| Week 10 | When things fall apart, part 2 | Week 10 notes |
| Week 11 | Student presentations and discussion, part 1 | Week 11 and 12 notes |
| Week 12 | Student presentations and discussion, part 2 | Week 11 and 12 notes |