1. An overview of the thesis project
What is a senior seminar thesis?
You will need to develop a study that engages an interesting, empirical question that produces meaningful, new knowledge about a political (PSC majors) or INR-relevant (INR majors) question.
Your research question must be answerable by an analysis of public opinion survey data that involves multivariate statistical analysis.
Because this is a social science project, your research question must connect to the previous literature (which will require a familiarity with Google Scholar)
What kinds of studies have students done?
We know this about group x, and we know this about group y. How do members of x and y behave?
We think we know that group x thinks/or behaves in this way, but event y has happened. Do group x and y still think the same way?
Based on research on certain types of people, we think that x causes y, but there is good reason to think that this relationship may not be true for another group.
In studies of political behavior, we typically find that some subgroup (e.g., women, Latinos, evangelicals, etc. behave differently). If we compare analyses of that group to those for non-members, what best explains why the group is different?

2. A review of key social science methods concepts
What specific qualities make political science a science? (e.g., the social sciences use certain types of methods to create research that is replicable, falsifiable, generalizable, and cumulative)
What is a research design?
What is a theory? What is a hypothesis? What is a variable? What is the null hypothesis?
What is operationalization?
What is an independent variable?
What is a dependent variable?
What is an intervening variable?
What is a control variable?
Can you give an example that puts all of these concepts together into a hypothetical study? Assume that you have been asked to explain a “model” of voter turnout in the 2016 election.

3. Key Concepts—Cont. What does the term “operationalization” mean?
What is a literature review? Where is the bulk of it typically found in a research article?
What is does it mean to say that some variables have higher “reliability” than others, while other variables have higher “validity” than others. What is “face validity?” How do assess our measures “construct validity” (Two examples: Think about education as a “proxy” for income or child rearing practices as a “measure” for authoritarianism)… see handout
Often, multiple variables are combined into additive indexes or scales that allow researchers to measure latent qualities
What is the difference between survey error and survey bias? Examples of both? How do you try to reduce each? What is acquiescence bias? What is social desirability bias?

4. Key Concepts—Cont.
What is the difference between survey error and survey bias? Examples of both? How do you try to reduce each? What is acquiescence bias? What is social desirability bias?
What is the difference between the mean and the median? When are they equal to one another? When is the mean larger/smaller (give an example of each)? What does a positive vs. a negative skew look like?
What is an outlier, and how does it impact the mean vs. the median? Other options to deal with outliers?
What is the “unit of analysis”? How does this concept need to figure into a research project?
What are categorical/nominal variables? What is a dummy variable? What are ordinal variables? What is a Likert scale)? What is an interval/continuous variable? What is a ratio variable?