UNIVERSITY OF NORTH GEORGIA
POLS 4470, Section OL1, "Senior Seminar in Political Science" -- Spring Semester 2021
Figures, Diagrams, Graphs, Tables, and Other Exhibits
Dr. Barry D. Friedman
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FEBRUARY 1 --
FOCUS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
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FEBRUARY 8 --
APPROACHES TO RESEARCH IN POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION AND PUBLIC OPINION
POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE UNITED STATES
Kay Lawson defines “political culture” as “a set of
attitudes, beliefs, and values that are widely shared and that
permit the members of that polity to ‘order and interpret political
institutions and processes, and their own relationships with such
institutions and processes.’”
Political culture of the United States (until 2016):
♦
Disputes are resolved peacefully in one of two major ways:
• Voting
• Litigation
Americans would understand that games (baseball, business,
elections, etc.) have rules. All
abide by the rules, and the losers respect the results.
Americans would respect the
legitimacy of the outcome. There was a quaint ritual marking the end
of an election for public office. In the case of a local election,
for example, the loser of the contest for a seat on the city council
would visit the winner’s headquarters, shake his hand, and
congratulate him. In the case of a state or national election, where
distance might not facilitate travel between the campaign
headquarters, the loser would make a telephone call to the winner,
congratulate her, and concede
defeat. The concession was a signal to the loser’s supporters
that the election was over, they should go back to their usual
activities, and they should
refrain from any unlawful effort to undo the result of the election.
♦
Extreme ideologies‑‑though it may be legal to advocate them‑‑are
rejected and denounced.
(“Liberal consensus”; “tyranny of the majority”)
♦
Criminal penalties are expected to be proportional to the criminal
offenses (we don’t shoot or hang horse thieves any more).
♦
Brazen acts of discrimination, verbal abuse, and other actions that
systematically mistreat members of minority groups are considered
immoral. |
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FEBRUARY 10 -- APPROACHES TO RESEARCH IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC POLICY
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SUMMARY OF MODELS OF PUBLIC POLICY
Name |
Independent variable |
Dependent variable |
Institutionalism |
Structure of institutions; roles of officeholders |
→ Public policy |
Policy process |
Flow chart (problem ID, agenda-setting, etc.) |
→ Public policy |
Group theory |
Existence of groups; bargaining and compromise |
→ Public policy |
Subgovernment model |
Iron-triangle relationships |
→ Public policy |
Elitism |
Elite preference |
→ Public policy |
Public choice |
Millions of self-interest-oriented actions |
→ Public policy |
Systems theory |
Interaction of government agencies with their task environment |
→ Public policy |
Incrementalism |
Last year’s policy |
→ Public policy |
Rationalism |
Analytical methods to optimize policy |
→ Public policy |
Game theory |
Competition between adversaries |
→ Public policy |
Innovation and diffusion |
State governments’ policy innovations; diffusion of innovations to other states and to the national government |
→ Public policy |
Technocracy |
Scientific discoveries |
→ Public policy |
Behavioralism |
Human behavior |
→ Public policy |
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FEBRUARY 17-19 -- APPROACHES TO RESEARCH IN POLITICAL PARTIES AND ELECTIONS
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FEBRUARY 24 -- EXPLORING CAUSE-AND-EFFECT RELATIONSHIPS
Watch out for:
Spurious relationships
(like the example about Presbyterian ministers)
Intervening variable
X → Z → Y
Hawthorne effect
What to do:
● Check for chronology. Does Y change right after X changes?
● Control for other variables (hold Z constant). Does the relationship appear to change?
● Start your research with a theory, based on other research and reason.
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MARCH 1, 5, AND 8 -- RESEARCH DESIGNS AND CREATING RESEARCH PROPOSALS
Experimental design involves centralized selection and random assignment (“®”) to two groups:
Experimental (test) group Control group
The chronology on the following schematic goes from left to right:
Test Group ® T1 X T2 Control Group ® C1 C2 |
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Before-after design
Notice that there is only one sample group: the test group. A pretest measurement occurs at Time 1 (before the treatment) and a posttest measurement occurs at Time 2 (after the treatment). We estimate that the effect of the treatment is T2 - T1.
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Comparative post-test
This time, there are two sample groups: a test group and a control group. A pretest measurement was not done for either group. Our estimate of the effect of the treatment is T2 - C2.
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Comparative change
The comparative change approach is very similar to the experimental design; the major difference is that there is no random sampling (i.e., no “®”).
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Interrupted time series
In this quasi-experimental design, there is only one group: a test group. Some plural number of observations are made before the treatment and some plural number of observations are made after the treatment.
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Comparative time series
This is like the interrupted-time-series design, except that now we have two sample groups.
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The quasi-experimental design involves many threats to validity (internal and external): attrition, history, Hawthorne effect, maturation, regression to the mean, etc.
TWO TABLES FROM MY DOCTORAL DISSERTATION: |
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MARCH 12
-- APPROACHES TO RESEARCH IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
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MARCH 22 --
UNIVARIATE AND BIVARIATE STATISTICS
Examples of frequency distributions for univariate analysis (i.e., there is only one variable, such as "X") | |
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BIVARIATE ANALYSIS
The simplest example of bivariate analysis is the construction of a contingency table. Here is a typical contingency table. We will cause the values of the independent variable to be the column titles and the values of the dependent variable to be the row titles.
Pet preference |
|
Sex |
|
Male |
Female |
||
Dog |
47 |
33 |
|
No preference |
28 |
31 |
|
Cat |
36 |
49 |
|
|
111 |
113 |
One simple way of making a contingency table useful for analysis is to convert the frequencies to percentages. If we have placed the independent variable and the dependent variable where I described, then here is what we do: We percentage down the columns and compare percentages across the rows.
Pet preference |
|
Sex |
|
Male |
Female |
||
Dog |
42.3% |
29.2% |
|
No preference |
25.2% |
27.4% |
|
Cat |
32.4% |
43.4% |
|
|
99.9% |
100.0% |
For the respondents who expressed a preference for dogs, that happened in the case of males 13.1 percentage points more (42.3 points – 29.2 points) than for females. For the respondents who expressed a preference for cats, that happened in the case of females 11.1 percentage points more than for males.
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EXPLANATION OF LINEAR REGRESSION |
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Personal disclaimer:
This page is not a publication of the University of North Georgia and UNG has
not edited or examined the content of the page. The author of the page is
solely responsible for the content.
Last updated on January 7, 2021, by
Barry D. Friedman.
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