1. PO326: Introduction to Political Science
Empirical workshop i- Political interest

2. WORKSHOP GOALS The Assignment Research Report Components
Technical bits
Excel

3. Your research report is based on the following questions:
What is your preferred measure of political interest, and why?
Based on your empirical data, is low political interest a problem on average?
Is interest in politics related systematically to field of study?
How confident are you about your conclusions in 2 and 3?
The Assignment builds on the work that we have conducted in previous weeks and covers core issues such as: Conceptualization and Operationalization

4. TECHNICAL BITS
Working in groups to collect data is fine, but everyone has to do their own analysis and report
You are therefore responsible for forming and managing any groups that you might want to work in
A grade sheet is attached to Moodle
Assignment is due both ONLINE and in HARD COPY (to the office)
A blank copy of the page that the respondent, or you will fill in, or a screenshot of your online survey or from
Your Excel worksheet containing the data
Excel worksheet with the commands you used to do your analyses

5. EXCEL
Why are we using Excel? Excel is a transferable software which is often used in Market Research (Survey & Opinion Polling) alongside the Civil Service
Today in Excel, we will demonstrate the following commands:
AVERAGE= AVERAGE (A2:A7)
AVERAGE FUNCTION= AVERAGEIF (range, criteria, [average_range])
SUMIF (range, criteria, [sum_range]
You may also point and click, instead of using the commands on Excel

6. EXCEL- EXAMPLES 1. Filling in data (numeric, character)
2. Selecting cells (syntax and mouse)
3. AVERAGE()
4. AVERAGEIF()
Formula
Description (Result)
=AVERAGE(A2:A7)
Averages all of numbers in list above
=AVERAGE(A2:A4,A7)
Averages the top three and the last number in the list
=AVERAGE(IF(A2:A7<>0, A2:A7,""))
Averages the numbers in the list except those that contain zero, such as cell A6

7. EXCEL EXERCISE
As you will have observed from the course so far, there are various ways in which we can conceptualize (define) and operationalize (measure) a range of political concepts
How would you define Political Interest?
How could we measure Political Interest empirically?

8. POLITICAL INTEREST MEASURES
1. Are you interested in politics?
Yes= 1, No= 0
2. Generally speaking, how strongly interested are you in politics?
Very Strongly= 3/Fairly Strongly= 2/Not so strongly= 1/Not at all=0
Note: The values we assign to the variables are inputted into Excel
Are these reliable and valid measures of our underlying construct?
We will also include other variables such as Age and Gender alongside the educational level

9. USEFUL APPLIED EXCEL LINKS
Additional Excel resources that you may find useful for this Assignment are outlined on the Moodle page and will be highly beneficial for future empirical workshops