What are accretion measures? | measures of a phenomena through indirect observation of the accumulation of materials |
What is content analysis? | a procedure by which verbal, nonquantitative records are transformed into quantitative data |
What is a covert observation? | observation in which the observer's presence or purpose is kept secret from those being observed |
What is direct observation? | actual observation of behavior |
What is an episodic record? | the portion of the written record that is not part of a regular, ongoing record-keeping enterprise |
What are erosion measures? | measures of phenomena through indirect observation of selective wear of some material |
What is a field study? | observation in a natural setting |
What is indirect observation? | observation of physical traces of behavior |
What is an informant? | person who helps a researcher employing participant observation methods interpret the activities and behavior of the informant and the group to which the informant belongs |
What is overt observation? | observation in which those being observed are informed of the researcher's presence and purpose |
What is participant observation? | observation in which the observer becomes a regular participant in the activities of those being observed |
What is primary data? | data recorded and used by the researcher who is making the observations |
What is a running record? | the portion of the written record that is enduring and covers an extensive period of time |
What is secondary data? | data used by a researcher that was not personally collected by that researcher |
What is a structured observation? | systematic observation and recording of the incidence of specific behaviors |
What is an unstructured observation? | observation in which all behavior and activities are recorded |
What is a written record? | documents, reports, statistics, manuscript, and other recorded materials available and useful for empirical research |
What is a citation manager? | computer software used with a word processor that builds a database of reference works and manages how they get cited in a paper. |
What is a coding protocol? | a clear system for encoding information about sample observations, usually sets forth numeric codes corresponding to variable values that all researchers should use. |
What are data archives? | collections of datasets made available to the general public or researchers; some political science journals maintain data archives for articles they have published. |
What are elite interviews? | interviews conducted with subjects who have special knowledge and access to information. |
What is a literature review? | a short summary of prior works that helps the reader understand the concepts, assumptions, and significance of a research project |
What is making observations? | When researchers personally evaluate observations and encode their evaluations of an observation’s properties as data. |
What are parenthetical citations? | Social scientists typically use parenthetical citations at the end of sentences that identify the author and year of publication of works cited. A complete list of works cited with detailed information, such as article titles and book publishers, gets appended to the article. |
What are replication datasets? | After publishing an article, the author may make all the datasets used in the analysis available to allow other researchers to reproduce the published analysis. |
What is a research plan? | A basic roadmap for conducting research that identifies the measurable and varying properties of your research topic and the research question you hope to answer, may include a conceptual map that identifies the independent and dependent variables. A good research plan can help you stay focused and motivated. |
What is a research question? | identifies what you hope to learn by doing your analysis and contribute by writing your research paper, can be stated as a puzzle you want to solve or a question you want to answer. |
What is the standard outline? | Political science articles tend to follow the same outline: introduction, literature review, theory, hypothesis, data and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. The standard outline can help you keep your ideas organized as you conduct your own analysis. |
What is a structured interview? | preplanned series of questions, often with limited arrays of answers offered to the subjects |
What is survey research? | Data collected from self-reported responses to test-like written documents. |
What is an unstructured interview? | a loosely planned interview in which questions vary from one subject to the next and the researchers adapts questions based on the subjects’ answers. |