Research Design in Political Science

1. Introduction: Designing Research in Political Science — A Dialogue between Theory and Data
Thomas Gschwend, Frank Schimmelfennig

Part I. Research Problem

2. Increasing the Relevance of Research Questions: Considerations on Theoretical and Social Relevance in Political Science
Matthias Lehnert, Bernhard Miller, Arndt Wonka

Part II. Concepts and Theory

3. Concept Specification in Political Science Research
Arndt Wonka

4. Typologies in Social Inquiry
Matthias Lehnert

Part III. Measurement

5. Making Measures Capture Concepts: Tools for Securing Correspondence between Theoretical Ideas and Observations
Bernhard Miller

6. Achieving Comparability of Secondary Data
Julia Rathke

Part IV. Case Selection

7. Dealing Effectively with Selection Bias in Large-n Research
Janina Thiem

8. Case Selection and Selection Bias in Small-n Research
Dirk Leuffen

Part V. Control

9. Selecting Independent Variables: Competing Recommendations for Factor-Centric and Outcome-Centric Research Designs
Ulrich Sieberer

10. Discriminating among Rival Explanations: Some Tools for Small-n Researchers
Andreas Dür

Part VI. Theoretical Conclusions

11. Falsification in Theory-Guided Empirical Social Research: How to Change a Tire while Riding Your Bicycle
Dirk Bièvre

12. Conclusion: Lessons for the Dialogue between Theory and Data
Thomas Gschwend, Frank Schimmelfennig

Keywords: Political Science and International Relations, Political Theory, Political Philosophy, Political Science, Learning & Instruction, Science, general, Methodology of the Social Sciences