Teaching Research Methods
Using the Learning Community Approach
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Research Methods is undoubtedly the most dreaded course in any Political Science curriculum
regardless of the variability in approach. At Shippensburg University, because of a rather
curious institutional history, the Research Methods course is very quantitative in nature, focused
heavily on statistical analysis and the use of SPSS. We are safe in saying that Research Methods
is THE most hated course in our curriculum. Because of the necessity of spending a great deal
of the semester teaching statistics and SPSS, the research design portion of the course was
shortened to the detriment of students gaining an understanding of the real significance or lack
of significance of the numbers they were generating. To that end, we undertook an experiment
in forming a Research Methods learning community that would provide students with the peer
support they needed in accomplishing a rigorous course and giving them theoretical content on
which to apply the methods they were learning. We set out to accomplish this goal by pairing
Research Methods with Comparative Politics. The courses were fully integrated in terms of
lecture material, exercises, exams, and final project. This paper is the description and analysis
of our applied research in teaching Research Methods and Comparative Politics.
Teaching Research Methods at Shippensburg University
Research Methods is taught as the second course in a three-course sequence that begins with
Introduction to Political Science and concludes with Public Policy Analysis. Students are
introduced to the ‘language’ of the discipline and foundational approaches to research design.
Research Methods begins with the basics of research design, focusing heavily on hypothesis
generation, identification of dependent and independent variables, and the operationalizing of
the variables. Students are then given an emersion in univariate, bivariate, and multivariate
analysis.
The series then concludes with Policy Analysis, where students set up a research design for
investigating a public policy outcome.
Problems Encountered with Teaching Research Methods
Aside from difficulties in overcoming student’s dislike of the class, we encountered two enduring
problems: unsatisfactory performance in student’s ability to transfer the knowledge of research
design to the Policy Analysis course and their lack of understanding the meaning and
significance of the results they were generating in their final projects in the Methods course.
Each will be briefly discussed in turn.
a.
Students inability to comprehend meaning and significance of research project results.
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