POLS
625
Exam
1 Review Sheet
Last Updated: September 30, 2009
This review is intended to give you a general idea of
what may appear on the exam. The exam
will cover material from the assigned readings and material that was presented
in the lecture.
Week1 [KKV: Ch1 pp3-12*, PA: Introduction, SPSS:
Getting Started, Ch1]
A brief overview of the
overall research process in political science
Specifying research
questions
Literature review
SPSS
Two
windows (Data view, variable view)
Variables
Data
entry
Variable
labels and value labels
Frequency
Week 2 [KKV: Ch1 (pp12- 32) Babbie:
Ch 3*]
Variables
Dependent,
independent, intervening, antecedent
Quantitative and qualitative studies
Theory and data
Improving research questions
1. A research project should pose a question that is “important” in the real world
2. A research
project should make a specific contribution to an identifiable scholarly
literature
Improving theory
Falsification
Improving data quality
Record
how they are generated
Validity and reliability
Improving the Use of Existing Data
Selection bias
Omitted variable bias
Units of analysis
Individual
data, aggregate data
Ecological
fallacy (Handout)
Babbie Ch3
Ethical Issues in Social Research
Informed consent,
confidentiality, anonymity, etc
Frequency
Manual calculation
SPSS
Week 3 [PA: Ch1, SPSS: Ch3 (pp37-49)]
Concepts
Operationalization
Multidimensionality
Measurement error
Systematic and random
SPSS
Recoding
Week 4 [PA: Ch2 (pp26-29), Ch3
(pp44-54), Ch6 (pp119-124) SPSS: Ch2]
Levels of measurement
Nominal, Ordinal, Interval
Theory and hypotheses
Duverger’s law
Democratic peace
Deduction and induction
Prisoner’s dilemma
Rational choice, dominant strategy, equilibrium,
collective action problem
Criteria for causality
Correlation, time order, nonspurious
Null hypotheses
Characteristics of good
hypotheses
Types of data
Cross-sectional, time-series, cross-sectional
time-series, panel
Descriptive stats
Frequency, Bar chart
Central tendency
Mean, median, mode (manual calculation)
Dispersion
Range, variance, standard deviation (manual
calculation)
SPSS
Frequency, central tendency, dispersion
Excel
Standard deviation
Week 5 [PA: Ch4 (pp72-81), Ch5
(pp94-100), Ch6 (126-134) SPSS: Ch4 (pp57-59), Ch5 (pp87-91)]
Isolating the impact of main
independent variable
Experimental studies
Experimental and control groups
Premasurement and
post-measurement
Random assignment
Laboratory and field experiments
Internal validity and external validity
Controlled comparison
e.g. crosstab with three variables (manual calculation)
Statistical inference
Sampling, random sampling, Literary Digest poll,
How many cases?
Desired level of accuracy (margin of error,
sampling error)
Confidence level
Variability
Central limit theorem
Normal curve (Z score)
SPSS
Crosstab
Bivariate and
multivariate
Z score
Excel
Z score
Week 6 [KKV: Ch2, Ch3]
Ch2
General knowledge and
particular facts
Interpretation of events
Uniqueness, complexity, and
simplification
How to organize facts
Descriptive inference
Systematic component and nonsystematic component
Criteria for judging descriptive inference
Unbiased
inference
Efficiency
Ch3
Defining causality
The fundamental problem of causal inference
Assumptions required for estimating causal effects
Unit
homogeneity, conditional independence
Rules for constructing causal theories
Falsifiability, internal consistency, selection of
dependent variables, concreteness, encompassing
The following formulae and the z table will be
provided.
Standard Deviation
Area under the normal curve
Z:
