In recent years, scholar-educators have examined a variety of new approaches for teaching research in political science. Many of these inquiries begin with the observation that research activities cause some students to experience trepidation and aversion. The result is often poor performance in courses which assign research. In this project, I…

This article discusses the current situation of research methodology training for international relations (IR) graduate students in China. Since the country's opening up, research methods training in IR has gradually advanced in universities. We administered a survey to postgraduate IR students in China about their training in research…

Faculty members are increasingly recognizing the value of integrating high impact practices, such as undergraduate research, into the college experience. In this paper, I argue that one way of getting undergraduate students involved in political science research is to develop undergraduate research labs, wherein a small group of undergraduate…

Learning-by-doing presents an opportunity for political science departments to instruct undergraduate students in social science research methods. Conducting these trainings as short-term, high impact programs have the potential to make research and research methods accessible and appealing to students. Building these opportunities around major…

Most undergraduate social science programs require the completion of a capstone experience before graduation. Despite the recognized potential of capstone courses to deepen learning, many students do not perform well. The present study examines several factors that may prepare students for academic success in a fairly typical capstone course for…

When it comes to research design, the literature largely focuses on prescriptions for strengthening causal inference--identifying confounders, selecting appropriately comparable cases, generating testable hypotheses, etc. This approach to research design features the logic of inquiry heavily, but overlooks the logic of discovery. The logic of…