Course Syllabus
PS 311 (Research Methods)
Instructor: Dr. Troy Gibson
Contact Information:
 Office: LAB 418
 Phone: 601-266-4277
 E-mail: troy.gibson@usm.edu
 Website: ocean.otr.usm.edu/~w302011
Course Description:
This course is designed to equip students with the basic skills necessary to
conduct real research in Political Science. Students will be introduced to the
basic components of research design and will be shown how to analyze data
and test hypotheses using primarily quantitative, but also qualitative,
techniques common in the social sciences.
Course Materials:
 Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics, 3rd edition. By Neil
Salkind (Bundled with SPSS Student Version 15): 9781412951517
Course Requirements (10 point scale):
Midterm Exam – 25%
Final Exam – 25%
Daily Grades (homework assignments and attendance) – 15%
Annotated Bibliography* – 10%
Research Paper** – 25% (consult course website for details)
Course Outline:
Aug
Aug
Sept
Sept.
Sept
Sept
Oct
Nov
Apr.
Dec
20 - Class Organization and Chapter 1 (Intro: Political Science as Science)
25 27 - Qualitative Methods (Ch 10: Salkind) and Becoming familiar with SPSS
(Appendix A)
1 3 – No Class Monday (Labor Day); Chapter 6 (Hypotheses and Testing),
Operationalization, and Chapter 16 (Reliability and Validity)
8 10 – Chapter 2 (Means) and Chapter 3 (Variability)
15 17 – Chapter 4 (Graphing) and Literature Review (Ch 3: Baglione)
22 24 – Chapter 5 (Computing Correlation Coefficients); Discussion of Topics
Thursday + Annotated Bibliography Due
29 31 - Chapter 7 (Probability: Fun with Z-Scores!!!)
6 8 – Midterm Exam
13 15 – Chapter 8 (Significance Testing)
20 22 – Chapter 9 (Means Testing: Different Groups)
27 29 – Chapter 10 (Means testing: Related Groups)
3 5 - Chapter 11 (Analysis of Variance)
10 12 – Chapter 13 (Testing with Correlation Coefficients)
17 19 – Chapter 14 (Linear Regression)
24 26 – Interpreting Multiple Regression Output; No Class Wednesday
(Thanksgiving)
1 – Continue…
Attendance:
I consider college students fully capable of making appropriate decisions with
respect to class attendance and equally capable of living with the consequences
of those decisions. Makeup exams will not be administered without acceptable
documentation of a serious health problem requiring medical attention or
excused school function (notify me well in advance). No makeup daily grades
will be administered for any reason, as I will drop your lowest daily grade at the
semester’s end.
Classroom Policies:
 Turn cellular phones off.
 Avoid anything that distracts classmates from full participation (tardiness, internet
surfacing, etc.)
 I strictly follow this institution’s standards with respect to academic dishonesty.
Conviction will result in an automatic “F” in the course and may also involve an
additional penalty from outside authorities. Consult your Student Handbook for
details.
*You are expected to do an Annotated Bibliography. It will help you with your
literature review for the research paper. Be sure to properly cite at least 5 references on
the topic of your research paper (2 popular media or internet think-tank articles; 3
scholarly publications; two and no more than two articles may be internet citations).
This assignment is due September 24.
Use the search engines EBSCOHOST and/or JSTOR for scholarly articles especially. For
help with the content and proper citation in doing an Annotated Bibliography, consult:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill28.htm
http://depts.washington.edu/pswrite/cite.html
http://lib.usm.edu/help/style_guides.html
**Research Paper: Select a topic to conduct actual research in Political Science. You
need to identify a research question, conduct a literature review, present relevant
theories, identify a research hypothesis, select and operationalize a dependent variable
and at least two independent variables, identify data sources or locations for both, report
and interpret univariate statistics for the dependent and main independent variable,
explain what method or technique used for the analysis and why. Your paper should be
double-spaced with proper citations and a reference page and 10-15 pages in length.
The paper should have the following subsections: introduction; literature review; data,
variables, and hypotheses section; methods and results section (provide justification for
the technique you use), and a brief conclusion. For help:
http://arches.uga.edu/~csallen/edicts.htm
Student Disability
If a student has a disability that qualifies under the Americans with
Disabilities Act and requires accommodations, he/she should contact
the Office for Disability Accommodations (ODA), for information on appropriate
policies and procedures. Box 5128; voice telephone or TTY 214-3232.