Course Catalogue

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This course will equip students with the necessary skills to understand, critically assess and put into practice the research design process in Politics and International Relations. It focuses on how to structure a research project and collect and analyse evidence in response to students' own research questions, with sessions on writing literature reviews, selecting and evaluating methodological choices, and ethical considerations around research in Politics and IR.

Lecture: one hour per week for 10 weeks

Tutorial: one hour per week for 10 weeks

Entry open to postgraduate students only

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1. Annotated bibliography focusing on research design and methods (1200 words, 30%)

2. Research Proposal (3000 words, excluding appendices) (70%)

- The assessment will involve formulating a research question matching their research interests, pick an appropriate methodological approach and method of data collection (where applicable)

- The assessment should include justification for the approach, case/methods, ethics, data collection instrument(s) (where applicable) and discuss the potential challenges of their choices.

- Proposals will typically include: Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology and necessary steps for data collection and analysis, and discussion of challenges.

The aim of the course is to equip students with the skills necessary to understand, critically assess, and undertake the research design process. We will explore common methodological approaches and their appropriateness to social science research, and the challenges involved. We seek to support students in developing their own research skills and how to apply them to their dissertations as well as other research they might do in the future.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Understand and critically assess research design choices relevant to studies in Politics and International Relations.

2. Acquire knowledge of a range of approaches to research and data collection and data analysis methods where appropriate, and assess their appropriateness for different research questions.

3. Identify and critically reflect on the key steps of a rigorous research design.

4. Formulate appropriate research design choices to address different research questions.

5. Identify whether empirical data collection is appropriate and, if relevant, address the challenges of data collection and data analysis

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.