Chapter16
Chapter
Putting It All Together
Outline
16-1
16-2
16-3
16-4
Introduction
Theoretical Implications
Policy Implications
Writing the Report
16-4a Introduction
16-4b Resources
16-4c Length of the Report
16-4d Format of the Report
16-4e Writing Style of the Report
16-4f Sample Research Papers
Chapter Summary
Chapter Quiz
Suggested Readings
Key Terms
policy implications
theoretical implications
325
326
Chapter 16
16-1 Introduction
Political scientists often investigate a phenomenon, distinguish and measure its
attributes, identify systematic patterns, and then construct a theory. In other
words, they perform research based on inductive reasoning. In this book, however,
we posit the use of deductive reasoning to guide a research effort. That is, you
select a proposition derived from existing theory for empirical investigation. Then
you design a research project and collect empirical data to test the proposition.
Next you input and analyze the data to determine support for the proposition.
These steps take you through the first seven stages of the research process of problem identification, element clarification, research design, measurement, data collection, data input, and data analysis. This brings us to the last stage of the process,
which is the generalization of the results through theory and policy implications.
An understanding of this chapter will enable you to
1. Consider, understand, and write up the theoretical implications of your study
in a final research paper.
2. Consider, understand, and write up the policy implications of your study in a
final research paper.
3. Write a research paper that addresses and includes the components of the
systematic research process.
4. Understand, evaluate, and critique other research efforts.
16-2 Theoretical Implications
theoretical implications: The
predicted effect that research
findings will have on the theory
being used to guide the research
effort.
When you consider the theoretical implications resulting from your study, you
want to evaluate the links you discovered between the conceptual world and the
empirical world and examine the following question: Does the data support the
theoretical proposition I tested? Several possibilities could lead to a negative
response. First, you need to reexamine the theory you tested. Maybe it does not
apply to the population you examined. For example, a theory that explained Third
World revolutions may not account for rioting in American cities. Second, you
need to reevaluate your design and measurement techniques. Perhaps your
methodology was not a valid way to study the theory.
If the answer to your question is yes, however, then there is some evidence that
the data supports the proposition. Consequently, you can generalize the theory to
the population or setting you studied. In addition, you can test other propositions
as a way to improve the theory. In any case you advance scientific knowledge
through the acceptance or refutation of theoretical propositions.
Let’s consider the following research question: Why is the United States better
off economically than China? While several factors account for America’s wealth
and China’s poverty, there are two important ones: China is heavily populated
with scant natural resources. America, on the other hand, is not as populated as
China and has abundant natural resources. Capitalism may also contribute to a
higher gross national product (GNP) and a healthier economy than communism.
To test these propositions you would collect data about each nation’s GNP,
population, and level of natural resources. You may also compare the economic
vitality of other capitalist and communist countries. Then you would perform statistical manipulations to test your hypotheses. If you found statistical significance
for your propositions, then you would have support for your theories. In other
words, the theories you tested explain the difference between the wealth of America and China. In sum, you can advance the theories you tested to your research
problem and the international scene.
Putting It All Together
327
16-3 Policy Implications
While the advancement of theory is important, it is equally important to determine the policy implications of your research efforts. Although the results of your
study tell you whether the theory you tested does apply to your sample and therefore to the population you are studying, the research process requires you to
address ways to put the results into practice through the policymaking process.
Thus, you need to discuss the policy implications resulting from your study.
Suppose, for example, you analyzed Edward Banfield’s notion that crime
depends primarily upon two sets of variables. The first set relates to one’s class culture and personality. Collectively, these two factors determine an individual’s
propensity to commit crime. The second set consists of several situational factors
such as the number of police on patrol. This set determines the individual’s
inducement to commit crime (Banfield 1990). As a result of your analysis, you discover that you can refute the proposition dealing with an individual’s propensity
to commit crime. On the other hand, you find support for the second proposition.
Based on these findings, what are the policy implications? It may be a suggestion to expand the police force or increase patrols in high-crime areas. In other
words, your study, which was an evaluation of Banfield’s theory, suggested
ways, or policies, to address crime in inner cities. This is what we mean by policy
implications.
16-4 Writing the Report
Writing the final report is the last step in your long journey. In the next sections
we spend time discussing this step.
16-4a Introduction
You have spent a great deal of time identifying a problem to examine; reviewing
literature; developing hypotheses; collecting, coding, and inputting data to computer systems; analyzing an array of data; and determining the theoretical and policy implications of your efforts. The good news is that these steps are finally
complete. The bad news, however, is it is time for you to prepare the final report.
Many believe that the hard work is over and, for the most part, it is. All that
most readers know about your research efforts, however, will be gleaned from your
final report. Thus, you want to prepare a professional report. You want to ensure
that your report clearly delineates each stage of the research process. You do not
want to detract from your efforts by producing a sloppy and unfocused report.
We would like to be able to give you a concise set of instructions that guarantee a professional final report. Unfortunately, we can give you only some general
guidance that will help you.
16-4b Resources
There are several manuals and websites that deal with the format and presentation
of research papers addressing general topics and political science. These publications help you to footnote, prepare bibliographies, display quoted material, and
prepare and depict tables, charts, and figures. These references will also help you
with your grammar and punctuation. Some of the better ones are the following:
American Psychological Association. The American Psychological Style Guide and
Manual, 5th ed. New York: American Psychological Association, 2001.
The American Psychological Association and Modern Language Association Style
Guides at http://www.apa-mla.com.
policy implications: The
predicted effect that the findings
of policy evaluation and analysis
will have on public policy.
328
Chapter 16
Fowler, H. Ramsey, Jane E. Aaron, and Daniel Anderson. The Little Brown
Handbook, 9th ed. New York: Longman Publishers, 2004.
Grossman, John (preface). The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Harnack, Andrew and Eugene Kleppinger. Online! A Reference Guide to Using
Internet Sources. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, 10th ed. New York:
Longman Publishers, 2001.
Schmidt, Diane E. Expository Writing in Political Science: A Practical Guide. New
York: HarperCollins, 1993.
Schmidt, Steffen W., Mack C. Shelley II, and Barbara A. Bardes. An Introduction to
Critical Thinking and Writing in American Politics. Minneapolis/St. Paul: West
Publishing, 1993.
Scott, Gregory M. and Stephen M. Garrison. The Political Science Student Writer’s
Manual, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.
Standler, Ronald B. Technical Writing at http://www.rbs0.com/tw.htm.
Strunk, William, Jr. and E. B. White. The Elements of Style, 4th ed. New York:
Allyn and Bacon, 1999.
Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Bibliography Styles Handbook.
Writer’s Workshop at
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/wworkshop/bibliostyles.htm.
In addition to the guidance you will find in these publications, you may want
to consider the following suggestions dealing with report length, format, and style.
16-4c Length of the Report
Inevitably our students ask us the following question: How long should our final
paper be? Often, we answer: Long enough to adequately present the findings. At
the doctoral level this amounts to, on the average, 225 pages. Master’s theses often
approach 100 pages while undergraduate research papers seldom exceed 20 pages.
Thus, paper length becomes a question of depth, brevity, precision, and level of
education. You can attain these objectives if you carefully consider what you want
to say, edit your work, and rewrite your paper after completing your first draft.
16-4d Format of the Report
As a minimum, your report should contain sections that address the problem
statement; review the related literature; succinctly discuss the research design;
present the data analysis, results, and interpretations; and present the theoretical
and policy implications and conclusions. In other words, the format of your paper
should, for the most part, follow the stages of the research process described
throughout this book.
In addition, most professors will want you to prepare a title page that includes
the title of your paper, your name, the professor’s name, the course number, course
name, and date. Some will also require an abstract and table of contents. Finally,
most will require a bibliography.
Putting It All Together
16-4e Writing Style of the Report
We suggest that you use some of the manuals we listed in Section 16-4b,
“Resources.” Strunk and White’s manual, for example, will give you several suggestions to improve your writing style. The authors stress the importance of revising and rewriting your paper. Diane Schmidt stresses that each paragraph be at
least three sentences long, each paragraph in the body of the paper have at least
two references, and the number of quotes you use in your paper be limited. In
other words, you should learn to paraphrase (Schmidt 1993, 250). In addition,
Schmidt, Shelley, and Bardes offer the following summary of rules on how to write
a successful research paper (Schmidt et al. 1993).
1. Use a plan when deciding on your topic.
2. Develop an outline before you begin writing.
3. Write a first draft.
4. Revise your first draft.
5. Define your terms.
6. Consider your reader/audience.
7. Paraphrase and use your own words.
8. Eliminate extraneous phrases such as “it should be noted . . . .”
9. Be succinct.
10. Be convincing and avoid the use of qualifiers such as “it seems.”
11. Be attentive to grammar and style.
16-4f Sample Research Papers
Throughout this book, we spent a considerable amount of time talking about
political questions and ways to try to resolve them through systematic research.
Appendix I presents research papers prepared by two of our Government course
students. While there are some grammatical problems, our goal is to show you the
quality of research that you can accomplish in a one-semester course.
You should carefully examine the papers. We believe they provide some useful
guidelines about research methodology, format, and style. When evaluating the
papers we want you to consider the following questions:
1. Are the problems clearly stated?
2. Is the literature succinctly reviewed?
3. Are the research elements clarified?
4. Are the research designs clearly presented?
5. Are testable hypotheses developed?
6. Is the data appropriate for the testing of the hypotheses?
7. Are the appropriate statistical techniques used?
8. Are the findings clearly presented?
9. Are the conclusions appropriate to the findings?
10. Are the theoretical and policy implications appropriate?
329
330
Chapter 16
Chapter Summary
Chapter Summary
As we said in Chapter 1, we wrote this book for several reasons. Our main reason, however, was to give you the basic
tools to carry out rigorous and sensible political science
research and data analyses. We told you about the importance of defining your problem, doing a thorough review of
the pertinent literature, developing a sound research design,
and creating an instrument and tool to collect your data and
then input it to a statistical computer program. We then
spent much time telling you ways to analyze one variable at
a time (univariate analysis), two variables (bivariate analysis), and several variables (multivariate analysis). In the
process, we also showed you how to summarize information
and test its use in a larger population.
For many of you, when you reviewed the first chapters
of our book, a deep feeling of anxiety may have set in. You
were convinced that its contents would be beyond your
comprehension. But you persevered and worked through
the book and the exercises. We know our efforts may not
have made you an expert in the rigors of political science
research. That was not our intent. Our intent was to enable
you to know more: more about political science, more about
the statistical methods used by political scientists, and more
about the political world around you. As another political
scientist once wrote, “Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also
dangerous” (Fox 1998).
In summary, the purpose of our book was to show you
that political research can be an enjoyable academic experience. As our way to enhance your satisfaction, we spent considerable time introducing you to a systematic research
process that is designed to alleviate your frustration, contribute to the reliability and validity of your results, and
make your research more effective. Thus, we wanted to show
you that although political research is an exacting and discriminating investigation undertaken by political scientists
to discover and interpret new political phenomena, it can
be, for the most part, fun.
Chapter Quiz
Chapter Quiz
1. When evaluating research papers and journal articles,
which of the following should you consider?
a. Were the research problems clearly stated?
b. Was the literature succinctly reviewed?
c. Were testable hypotheses developed?
d. Were the appropriate statistical techniques used?
e. You should do each of choices a through d when
evaluating research papers and journal articles.
2. As a minimum, your research report should contain
sections that address which of the following?
a. the problem statement
b. reviewing the related literature
c. succinctly discussing the research design
d. presenting the theoretical and policy implications
and conclusions
e. Your research report should contain sections
addressing each of choices a through d.
3. Diane E. Schmidt offers several suggestions when
writing a research report. In particular, she stresses
that
a. each paragraph of a research report should be at
least three sentences long.
b. each paragraph in the body of the paper should
have at least two references.
c. you should limit the number of quotes you use
in your paper.
d. you should learn to paraphrase.
e. Schmidt suggests all of the above.
4. The _____________________________ section
of a research report succinctly describes the predicted
effect that the findings of policy evaluation and
analysis will have on public policy.
a. literature review
b. policy implications
c. theoretical implications
d. methodology
e. data analysis
5. The last stage of the research process involves the
generalization of the results by identifying and
discussing ____________.
a. theory implications
b. policy implications
c. the conclusions of the authors of the literature
reviewed
d. Both choices a and b are correct.
e. Both choices a and c are correct.
6. Your study, which was an evaluation of Edward
Banfield’s theory about urban crime, suggested ways
to address crime in inner cities. These suggestions are
examples of _____________________.
a. theoretical implications
b. policy implications
c. normative reaction
d. Both choices a and b are correct.
Putting It All Together
7. According to the textbook, _______________ wrote
that crime depends primarily upon two sets of
variables: one’s class culture and personality and
several situational factors such as the number of police
on patrol.
a. Robert Dahl
b. James Q. Wilson
c. Edward Banfield
d. Michael Parenti
8. The length of a research paper becomes a question
of _____________
a. depth.
b. brevity.
c. precision.
d. All of choices a through c are factors that need to
be considered when determining the length of a
research paper.
331
9. What would you do if the data you collected did not
support the theory you studied?
a. I would reexamine the theory I tested.
b. I would reevaluate my research design.
c. I would reevaluate my measurement techniques.
d. I would take each of steps a through c.
10. When you consider the _________________ resulting
from your study, you want to evaluate the links you
discovered between the conceptual world and the
empirical world and examine the following question:
Does the data support the theoretical proposition I
tested?
a. ethical dilemmas
b. policy implications
c. theoretical implications
d. research models
Suggested Readings
Suggested Readings
American Psychological Association. The American Psychological Style Guide and Manual, 4th ed. New York:
American Psychological Association, 1994.
Fowler, H. Ramsey, Jane E. Aaron, and Daniel Anderson. The
Little Brown Handbook, 8th ed. New York: Longman
Publishers, 2000.
Grossman, John (preface). The Chicago Manual of Style,
14th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Harnack, Andrew and Eugene Kleppinger. Online! A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Leedy, Paul D. and Jeanne Ellis Ormrod. Practical Research:
Planning and Design, 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Merrill, Prentice Hall, 2001.
Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide,
9th ed. New York: Longman Publishers, 1998.
Schmidt, Diane E. Expository Writing in Political Science: A
Practical Guide. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.
Schmidt, Steffen W., Mack C. Shelley II, and Barbara A.
Bardes. An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Writing
in American Politics. Minneapolis/St. Paul: West Publishing, 1993.
Scott, Gregory M. and Stephen M. Garrison. The Political
Science Student Writer’s Manual, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Strunk, William, Jr., and E. B. White. The Elements of Style,
4th ed. New York: Allyn and Bacon, 1999.
Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Bibliography
Styles Handbook. Writer’s Workshop at http://www.english.uiuc.edu/wworkshop/bibliostyles.htm.