Research Design in Political Science

THOMAS GSCHWEND is Research Assistant Professor at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, Germany. His articles have been published, inter alia, in the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research and Political Analysis. He is also on the Editorial Board of Electoral Studies. FRANK SCHIMMELFENNIG is Professor of European Politics at ETH Zurich, Centre for Comparative and International Studies, Switzerland. He is the author of The EU, NATO, and the Integration of Europe (2003) and

• Designing Research in Political Science; T.Gschwend & F.Schimmelfennig Increasing the Relevance of Research Questions; M.Lehnert, B.Miller & A.Wonka Concept Specification in Political Science Research; A.Wonka Typologies in Social Inquiry; M.Lehnert Making Measures Capture Concepts; B.Miller Achieving Comparability of Secondary Data; J.Rathke Dealing Effectively with Selection Bias in Large-n Research; J.Thiem Case Selection and Selection Bias in Small-n Research; D.Leuffen Selecting Independent Variables; U.Sieberer Discriminating among Rival Explanations: Some Tools for Small-n Researchers; A.Dür Falsification in Theory-Guided Empirical Social Research; D.De Bièvre Lessons for the Dialogue between Theory and Data; T.Gschwend & F.Schimmelfennig

'The internal structure of each of the chapters nicely fits the hands-on approach taken in this book. Each chapter starts by introducing and discussing the specific research design issue addressed within it. Five to ten practical guidelines are then given as to how to translate the abstract reasoning into concrete research. Finally, examples of real research are used to illustrate the abstract discussion and to provide flesh to the guidelines. The second strong point is the distinction made between outcome-centric and factor-centric research, or in other words research that seeks to identify the causes of an outcome (or effect) and that research that is interested in the effect of a specific cause. While others have made this distinction before, this book elaborates on the consequences of this distinction for several elements of the research design such as the implications for the function of typologies (chapter by Lehnert) and the selection of independent variables (Sieberer) the volume devotes a chapter to the very start of the research process the identification of the research question. Here the emphasis is on increasing the relevance of the research question by discussing theoretical and societal relevance.' - Markus Haverland, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands in European Political Science, December 2010