M ETHODOLOGY IN P OLITICAL S CIENCE : Q UALITATIVE R ESEARCH M ETHODS October 15, 2014 By Hung-jen Wang 王宏仁

T ODAY ’ S O UTLINE I. Process Tracing Method (to continue last lecture) II. Concept Formation and Measurement

S UMMARY ON P ROCESS -T RACING Process-tracing method offers an alternative way for making causal inferences when it is not possible to do so through the method of “controlled comparison” [that is, to find cases similar in every respect but one] Process-tracing method can identify single or different paths to an outcome, point out variables that were otherwise left out in the initial comparison of cases, and permit causal inference on the basis of a few cases or even a single case. Process-tracing method identifies different causal paths that lead to a similar outcome in different cases [the idea of “equifinality” or “multiple convergence”] The large-N statistical analyses likely to overlook the possibility of equifinality and find only one causal path; processing tracing can supplement such weakness, and furthermore explain for deviant cases.

II. C ONCEPT F ORMATION AND M EASUREMENT

( A ). C ONCEPT F ORMATION

D EFINING C ONCEPTS Concepts should be accurate, precise, and informative. Concepts used to name and describe features of our environment. The identification and delineation of the scientific disciplines A process  concepts  a shared consensus over some concepts  the development of theories  a theory of politics

T HE PROBLEM OF THE MEASUREMENT For example, the question of why some countries are more democratic than other :

T HE Q UALITY OF K NOWLEDGE Our research inquiry : the connection between economic development and democracy. Our working hypothesis : countries with a high level of economic development will be more likely to have democratic forms of government. Concept definitions : suppose that there are two definitions of economic development, and two definitions of democracy. Data : 12 countries (A-L).  The beginning of our troubles : “Conceptual Confusion”

T ABLE 1

H OW TO S OLVE THE PROBLEM OF CONCEPTUAL CONFUSION ? Researchers should think carefully about the concepts and to share their meanings with others. To review and borrow definitions developed by others in the field. Exercise : 1) Political Participation. Those activities by private citizens that are more or less directly aimed at influencing the selection of government personnel, the actions they take, or both. 2) Political Violence. All collective attacks within a political community against the political regime, its actors—including competing political groups as well as incumbents—or its policies. 3) Political Efficacy. The feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact upon the political processes—that is worthwhile to perform one’s civic duties. 4) Belief System. A configuration of ideas and attitudes in which the elements are bound together by some form of constraint or functional interdependence.

(B). M EASUREMENT

W HAT IS THE “M EASUREMENT ”? Systematic observation and representation by descriptions, scores, or numerals that are made to decide the presence, absence, or amount of the concepts in the real world.

T HE P ROCESS OF M EASUREMENT IS IMPORTANT … It provides the bridge between our proposed explanations and the empirical world they are supposed to explain. Example 1: how to measure the impact of income inequality on affluent countries? Example 2: If we want to measure the turnout rates in U.S., how should we decide the number of eligible voters?

D EVISING M EASUREMENT S TRATEGIES Operational Definition : which helps us to decide what kinds of empirical observations should be made to measure toe occurrence of an attribute or a behavior.  Example 1: (1) suppose that we try to hypothesize that higher rates of literacy make democracy more likely, then a definition of two concepts—literacy and democracy—would be necessary; (2) suppose that literacy was defined as “the completion of six years of formal education”, and democracy was defined as “a system of government in which public officials are selected in competitive elections”; then (3) we can develop our operational definition of literacy as “those nations in which at least 50 percent of the population has had six years of formal education, as indicated in a publication of the United Nations,” and of democracy as “those countries in which the second-place finisher in elections for the chief executive office has received at least 25 percent of the vote at least once in the past 8 years.”

 Example 2: In order to understand why some individuals are more liberal than others. Interview question: Some people think that the government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor, perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or by giving income assistance to the poor. Others think that the government should not concern itself with reducing this income difference between the rich and the poor. Here is a card with a scale from 1 to 7. think of a score of 1 as meaning that the government ought to reduce the income differences between rich and poor, and a score of 7 as meaning that the government should not concern itself with reducing income differences. What score between 1 and 7 comes closest to the way you feel?

G ETTING TO O PERATIONALIZATION How to overcome practical barriers to ideal measurement?  Example 1: Two scholars, Segal and Cover, try to understand the extent to which the votes cast by Supreme Court justices were dependent on their own personal political attitudes.  Steps : (1) Two scholars limit their inquiry to votes on civil liberties cases between ; (2) they infer the judges’ attitudes from the newspaper editorials written about them in four major daily newspaper (from the time each justice was appointed by the president); (3) trained analysts read the editorials and coded each paragraph for whether it asserted that a justice was liberal, moderate, or conservative (regarding support for the rights of defendants in different situations); (4) they selected the editorials appearing in two liberal papers and in two conservative papers  Conclusio n: an indirect measure of judicial attitudes as perceived by four newspapers

T HE A CCURACY OF M EASUREMENTS Reliability : concerns the extent to which an experiment, test, or any measuring procedure yields the same results on repeated trials; the more consistent the results given by repeated measurements, the higher the reliability of the measuring procedure. Three ways of deciding reliability: 1) The test-retest method 2) The alternative-form method 3) The split-halves method

V ALIDITY Validity refers to the degree of correspondence between the measure and the concept it is thought to measure. Examples of invalid measures : (1) the larger a city’s police force is, the less crime that city will have; (2) voter turnout

F OUR W AYS OF EVALUATING THE VALIDITY OF ANY MEASURE Face validity may be asserted when the measurement instrument appears to measure the concept it is supposed to measure. Content validity involves determining the full domain or meaning of a particular concept and then making sure that measures of all portions of this domain are included in the measurement technique. Construct validity is demonstrated when a measure of a concept is related to a measure of another concept (with which the original concept is thought to be related). Interitem association relies on the similarity of outcomes of more than one measure of a concept to demonstrate the validity of the entire measurement scheme.