Research Design

This course aims at providing tools for developing a sound research design. Moreover, it offers a wide-range introduction to the diverse strategies and methodological tools employed by contemporary social science, in order to first provide students with the ability to understand research products that belong to different research traditions and approaches in political science. The course starts with a presentation of the cycle of social and political research. Some key aspects on how to build a proper research design are discussed and analysed in following steps, in particular: 1) the construction and development of concepts and their operationalization; 2) the selection of cases and all the choices related to the spatial and temporal scope of a research.

The second part of the course moves on to a comparison among different approaches and strategies that a researcher may adopt within the broad framework of the comparative method, and particularly the longterm debate between small-N and large-N strategies, case-oriented and variable-oriented research. Finally, students are asked to prepare and present their own PhD research design, based on what they have learnt throughout the course.

Teachers: Dr. Vincenzo Emanuele and Prof. Paola Mattei