Research Fields I

Seminar 1 — Course Introduction: What Is a Research Field?

Sirus Dehdari

Introduction

What this course does

  • How should we think about our research field(s)?
  • What are the important and relevant discussions/research questions?
  • Academic debates, research gaps
  • How do we contribute?

Course outline

– Today: How to think about research fields, and the annotated bibligraphy

– Seminar 2: discuss a few papers/recent dissertations

– Seminar 3: Discuss drafts of your annotated bibliography

– Seminar 4: Presentation and discussion of final annotated bibliographies

– The annotated bibliography: a list of a field’s key works, annotated to show what we know (and do not know), the key debates, and the dominant theories and methods.

– It helps you to find interesting reseach gaps, and to situate your contributions

Writing the annotated bibliography

  1. First step: find and record relevant work (publications, books, and other documents)
  2. Cite each work properly — APA, or another standard political science citation format
  3. Write a summary of the work:
    1. the background of the author(s)
    2. the research question and the arguments of the author(s)
    3. their main findings and how these compare to other works
    4. how this work is relevant to your field

Example entry (APA style)

Waite, L., Goldschneider, F., & Witsberger, C. (1986). Nonfamily living and the erosion of traditional family orientations among young adults. American Sociological Review, 51(4), 541–554.

The authors, researchers at the Rand Corporation and Brown University, use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that nonfamily living by young adults alters their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations, moving them away from their belief in traditional sex roles. They find their hypothesis strongly supported in young females, while the effects were fewer in studies of young males. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families. In contrast, an earlier study by Williams cited below shows no significant gender differences in sex role attitudes as a result of nonfamily living.

Source: Cornell University Library

Identify your research field(s)

  • Why identifying your research field(s) is important?

    1. You find interesting and relevant research questions, once you know the ongoing debates
    2. You make contributions to debates that scholars care about
    3. You identify gaps in the literature
    4. You learn about the appropriate analytical tools
    5. You can situate your research in the existing literature

  • The annotated bibliography can help you

What do we know

  • What has been done?

  • What are the gaps, and are they worth exploring?

  • Which analytical tools/methods are commonly used?

  • What type of data (if any)?

Key concepts and theories

  • How are key concepts defined in previous work?
  • What theories does previous work rely on or use, and how are they used?
  • What do they explain or predict?
  • Are there different schools?
  • How are core concepts (e.g., democracy, power, corruption) defined in this field specifically?
  • Are theories and concepts borrowed from related disciplines?

Assessing the evidence

  • Are the methods employed in previous work sound?

  • Are the data good enough?

  • How does what we know depend on the choice of methods and data?

  • New research often claim to have improved the way of studying question X, or measuring parameter Y

Key works, and important debates

  • Are there seminal works in these research fields?
  • Are there ongoing debates in these research fields?
  • Do we learn anything about human behavior in general, or society at large?
  • Connects to the point on research gaps: why does a particular gap warrant our attention?
  • Some gaps exist because we don’t believe exploring them would teach us enough
  • Is this just a “hot” but fleeting topic?

Key outlets

  • Where is this research usually published?

  • Books? Specialized outlets/top-field journals? General interest journals?

  • Work published in top journals (APSR, AJPS, BJPS, etc.) could signal something about the importance of the research field

  • Where you publish during your PhD shapes your career after it — think about your ambition level early

Theory vs previous research

  • Common struggle: what goes in the theory section, and what goes in the previous research section?

  • Often we can separate previous work into two categories

    1. What we should expect/what theories predict
    2. What others have shown

  • Example: does driving an expensive/fancy SUV make you more likely to get in a car accident?

Example: SUVs and accidents

  • Theory section: discuss the theories that help us understand the causal mechanism/direction

    1. SUVs are difficult to handle/drive
    2. Those who opt for SUVs are worse drivers (perhaps related to gender)
    3. SUVs are expensive to repair so people drive more carefully

  • Previous work: relevant studies related to car accidents, driving etc.

  • Theory section fixes ideas, tells the reader how to think about this problem/phenomena

  • Previous work fills the reader in on the relevant facts (stylized facts)

Framing

  • The key debates also helps us frame our work

  • Example from my own ongoing work: does having an older sister make younger siblings less likely to support radical right parties?

  • Stylized fact: men are more likely to support radical right parties (the gender gap)

  • Backlash theory offers one explanation for this gap

  • Separate literature: political socialization within families

  • The introduction frames the work as bridging the political socialization literature with the cultural backlash theory

Next time — Seminar 2

  • Discussion of recent PhD dissertations, and a paper by one of our colleagues

  • Discussion with a newly graduated PhD from our department