Read Teaching and Learning Articles with Replication Datasets

This study asks whether professors’ identities — including gender and perceived race or ethnicity — influence which courses first-year university students choose to enroll in. Using a choice-based conjoint experiment with first-year students, the authors examine whether attributes of instructors affect students’ selection decisions and report measurable effects of instructor gender and perceived race/ethnicity on course choice.

A global ranking of political science departments is presented using publication and citation measures drawn from a multi-continent dataset.

Model United Nations position papers demand extensive background research and concise policy articulation on international issues. This study assesses how well ChatGPT can produce those papers compared with student-written submissions.

Why This Matters: Political scientists increasingly study sensitive topics such as violence and repression, and professional ethics guidance (e.g., APSA 2022; Fujii 2012) urges researchers to avoid retraumatizing participants. Amanda Weiss argues that focusing narrowly on "retraumatization" can obscure other harms and leave researchers unprepared for the full range of ethical risks in different field contexts.

Classroom discussions of current events and controversial topics can devolve into unproductive, highly charged debates. This article describes an in-class exercise that fosters respect during difficult conversations by asking students to design rules and guidelines to create a safe space for dialogue.

Political science publishing remains male-dominated: a random political science journal article is roughly twice as likely to be written by a man. Many questions about where women are present or absent in the discipline remain unanswered—across journal prestige, coauthorship patterns, and subfields.

Political science programs bear responsibility for incorporating material that involves and engages underserved populations. Recent polls find a significant majority of Generation Z identifying as LGBTQ+, representing a percentage larger than those who identify as African American or Hispanic (Jones 2024; Public Religion Research Institute 2024).

By many accounts, the state of peer reviewing is under strain: editors report difficulty getting scholars to respond to review requests, let alone accept and complete reviews on time. Earlier, pre-pandemic work (Djupe 2015; Djupe, Smith, and Sokhey 2022) found that reviewing was heavily concentrated in a core set of reviewers, that reviewing rose with age and rank, and that political scientists broadly affirmed the value of peer review for themselves and the discipline.

This article argues that classroom simulations of real-world electoral institutions are a powerful pedagogical tool for political science students.

Context

Twitter has served as a central forum for academics to communicate with colleagues, policymakers, and the public. Elon Musk's takeover brought broad changes to the platform—reduced public data access, shifts in moderation and misinformation policy, and altered platform affordances. This study asks a narrow empirical question: how did those changes affect academic activity on Twitter?

A complete census was compiled of every tenure-track (TT) faculty member in the 122 PhD-granting political science departments in the United States to identify which graduate programs place faculty into the discipline's research universities.

Political science departments issued public statements in the summer of 2020 following the brutal murder of George Floyd and the longer history of deadly violence against Black people by law enforcement. These departmental statements are treated as windows into how a discipline focused on power publicly responds to racial violence and inequality.

This article assesses the state of terminal master’s (MA) degree programs in political science in the United States to determine whether they prepare graduates for the workforce, especially those pursuing nonacademic careers.

Academic conferences are key sites for sharing research and building careers, but they also host documented instances of harassment and discrimination. Codes of conduct are widely promoted as tools to reduce those harms, yet their presence and substance at political science meetings remain uneven.

Rising use of AI tools like ChatGPT is reshaping academic settings, and instructors face decisions about how to manage and integrate these tools. This study documents how frequently political science undergraduates use ChatGPT and how confident they are in applying AI to academic tasks, then links those patterns to practical classroom policies.

This study measures publication trends for gender and LGBTQIA+ scholarship in five top political science journals from 2017 through 2023 (inclusive). The analysis identifies articles focused on gender politics and LGBTQIA+ politics and records author gender and methodological approach.

Recent advances in generative large language models pose immediate questions for how political science is taught, learned, and assessed. This article investigates those implications by analyzing two novel surveys conducted through the discipline’s major professional body, the American Political Science Association (APSA), and closes with targeted recommendations.

This study evaluates 195 pre-analysis plans (PAPs) registered between 2011 and 2016 on Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) and American Economic Association platforms. The research examines whether these early PAPs were sufficiently clear, precise, and comprehensive to effectively prevent post-hoc hypothesis fishing or data dredging.

This study examines the adoption of Twitter by political science researchers. We analyze data from all U.S.-based political scientists at PhD-granting institutions who maintain public accounts.

Most prior work on diversity in political methodology centers on gender and often overlooks racial and ethnic differences. This study examines how race/ethnicity and gender relate to political science PhD students' methodological self-efficacy—especially quantitative self-efficacy—and to their broader academic self-efficacy.

Political methodology courses are among the most difficult political science courses to teach, and young faculty—who have the least amount of teaching experience—often are asked to teach them. 1 Resources abound for prospective instructors. Oxford University Press (Box-Steffensmeier, Brady, and Collier 2008) and SAGE Publications (Curini and Franzese 2020) curated extensive handbooks on political methodology; many articles have been written to introduce the key features of the subfield and describe its history (Beck 2000; King 1990; Roberts 2018); and several popular textbooks can be used for graduate (eg, Bailey 2015) and undergraduate (eg, Kellstedt and Whitten 2018) students. Although these resources offer useful insights into the history and substance of political methodology, they do not provide much in the way of best practices for delivery of the material. We drew on the political methodology community to generate a list of dos and don’ts for new faculty tasked with teaching courses in political methodology. In fall 2020, we conducted a survey of the membership of the American Political Science Association (APSA) Political Methodology section. We asked participants to rate their early performance as purveyors of political methods, to reflect on the balance of material contained in their previous and current syllabi, to respond to questions about the biggest mistakes they made as young faculty, and to offer the best advice they have for new faculty today.

A blueprint for an interactive, one-semester-long statistics and programming seminar that blends project-based learning with elements of an inverted classroom. The combined format supports students' learning progress and fosters engaging virtual classes. The same setting can be adapted to shorter or longer courses and to both introductory and advanced levels.

Political science as a field increasingly demands transparency in data and methods so readers and reviewers can follow arguments and replicate findings. Yet citation practices have lagged: citations often refer to whole works rather than the specific pages or sections that support a claim.

A short-lived rule changed how teachers were evaluated by altering which student test scores counted. Students who failed an initial end-of-year test were retested a few weeks later, and only the higher of the two scores was used to calculate the teacher's evaluation score. That rule created a clear discontinuity in teachers' incentives when deciding how to allocate effort across assigned students.

Fewer than half of reviewer invitations are accepted at many political science journals, increasing editors' workloads and lengthening the review process for authors. This study examines which invitations succeed and whether simple changes to invitation letters can improve acceptance at the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

This study asks whether the gender gap documented in international political science publishing also exists within Italian political science. To avoid cross-country comparability problems common in prior work (which often compares U.S. publication rates to U.S. workforce data), a single-country approach is used to evaluate whether a ‘‘glass-ceiling’’ persists for political scientists who aim to publish their research.

Political science research has historically centered on North America and Western Europe. While "globalization" brings increased attention to other regions today, this geographical imbalance remains notable.

Undergraduate Wikipedia assignments can serve two linked goals, the authors argue: improving public information on politics in the Global South and providing strong pedagogical benefits. Drawing on their experience teaching African politics, they contend that students are motivated and well positioned to close content gaps on Wikipedia because they can access gated scholarship, receive expert supervision, and translate academic sources for general audiences. The assignment also develops digital literacy, research and citation skills, technical-editing experience on a web platform, neutral writing competence, and confidence producing public-facing work, and it works in both in-person and online teaching contexts.

Analysis of survey responses from men and women faculty in PhD-granting political science departments assesses perceptions of departmental climate and the relationship between those perceptions and research productivity.

Has the pandemic worsened gender inequality in academia? This analysis uses 1.8 million tweets from roughly 3,000 political scientists to track professional visibility on social media—an important channel for career advancement—and to observe how behavior changed as work moved online.

Compared responses to a PhD career survey administered before and after major COVID-19 developments at a comparatively well‑resourced U.S. institution. The analysis contrasts answers across survey dates and by student seniority to assess shifts in career aspirations and job priorities.

Leading political science journals now emphasize data access and research transparency through online appendices. These digital resources often contain essential replication materials including datasets and code.

How do we teach political polarization to Gen Z? This article explores an innovative approach using Dalton and Putnam's contrasting perspectives.

This article examines the difficulties women of color face within political science academia, despite broader calls for diversity.

This study investigates curricular reforms in senior seminars at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). While field experiments are mentioned as a method, the specific findings regarding reform effectiveness across different educational contexts remain unspecified. The research aims to understand how these institutions address and implement changes within their capstone political science courses.

This article examines ethnic and nativity-based inequities in political science graduate education.

This study examines career concerns in Italian academia by modeling academic promotion as a contest. The theoretical framework uses the standard contest model formalized as a multiunit all-pay auction. In this framework, the following parameters determine academics' effort and output:

This study explores how inclusive political networks influence representation in policy-making, contrasting with traditional elite-centric models.

This article explores how students deepen their understanding of international relations by designing political games. The innovative "International Relations and Games" course required students to create original game rules, scenarios, and mechanics based on IR concepts, theories, and topics.

This article explores the enduring value of peer-reviewed undergraduate research journals. It examines how involvement in editing or authoring for the Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics enhances learning and professional development.

This article examines how the COVID-19 pandemic differentially affected the research productivity of male and female academics and whether the crisis may further widen existing gender gaps in both the short and long term.

This innovative approach integrates political science education with literature through a unique simulation-based course centered on restorative justice. The curriculum features case studies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in post-apartheid South Africa and ongoing debates surrounding TRC implementation in Northern Ireland.

In 2017, the American Political Science Association (APSA) took steps to lower student fees for division membership, hoping to boost graduate involvement. This analysis shows nearly two-thirds of divisions reduced or eliminated fees by 2019.

This article asks three related questions about political speech in the classroom:

A formal model of the publication process is developed that captures the interaction between an initial study and a subsequent replication. The model identifies how editorial and authorial choices about what to submit and what to accept shape published evidence across these two-stage research sequences.

The shift to online academic conferences significantly lowers carbon emissions. This article analyzes the European Consortium for Political Research's (ECPR) 2020 virtual event compared to its physical counterpart.

Problem Existing research on publications often overlooks the variety of career paths in political science.

This article examines how political scientists' research careers evolve differently in university settings.

Does the digital classroom deliver what it promises? While online learning is ubiquitous, this article argues that a key factor often overlooked in political science education may be crucial for genuine engagement: social presence.

Recent reports highlight the growing need for data science talent within society.

Publication bias is common in social sciences because journals favor statistically significant results. However, publication bias depends on a variable's role—key or control—in regression models. This study shows that when democracy is a key variable (rather than a statistical control) it faces stronger publication bias.

New research explores how the COVID-19 pandemic affected scholarly productivity among academics, particularly women and parents. A survey of political scientists and international studies scholars captured initial reactions to disruptions like shelter-at-home orders and anticipated consequences.

The article "Toward Better Hiring Practices" explores methods to improve recruitment processes.

This study investigates the relationship between political science major enrollment rates and institutional practices.

This study investigates persistent gender disparities in status determination within American political science.

New research explores the gender gaps in perceptions of political science journals. While studies suggest a gender publication gap, this survey reveals that perceived biases vary across different journals. Both male and female scholars report differing views on where their work is likely to succeed.

International relations scholars worry that factional divides along theoretical lines stifle research potential.

This article examines gender representation at the American Political Science Association's 2017 and 2018 annual meetings. The author analyzes how different program divisions vary significantly in their female representation, revealing concerning disparities that suggest 'manels' persist across political science conferences.

Exposure to teacher stereotypes was measured using the Gender-Science Implicit Association Test (IAT) and linked to student achievement on standardized tests. The math gender gap is defined here as the score of boys minus the score of girls on those standardized tests. Analysis compares students assigned to math teachers with stronger versus weaker gender-science stereotypes.

Student workers shape professor productivity through the quality of research and teaching support they provide, and that support depends in part on whether students follow directions or rules set by the professor. Existing work on rule following is growing, but little is known about what shapes rule following in student–professor work relationships.

This study investigates how passive gender representation — when a teacher's gender matches a student's — affects students' academic self-concepts in math. Theoretical ideas from representative bureaucracy are combined with insights from social and educational psychology to build a model that explains individual-level mechanisms linking gender congruence to student outcomes.

New research reveals a stark gender disparity in political science journals.

This study complements Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell (2018) by shifting focus from whether articles cite female-authored work to how often articles written by women are cited. The analysis examines citation counts for articles in the Dion et al. dataset, conditional on an article having at least one female author.

This study compares Brazil's expert-driven journal evaluations with citational measures to see which better explains journal quality in political science between 2010 and 2014.

This study measures gender gaps in scholarly citations across political science subfields and across methodological subfields within political science, sociology, and economics. The aim is to see how citation patterns vary with the underlying distribution of female scholars and whether increases in female representation reduce men's citation advantages.

Problem: A study finds a concerning number of digital links in APSR articles are broken.

New research shows that statistically significant results are disproportionately published in political science. Using a novel dataset tracking quantitative findings across the field, this paper demonstrates that published estimates consistently overstate their true effect size under various prior assumptions. While conventional statistical significance testing (α=0.05) increases false positive rates when applied to potentially biased data, lowering α reduces these errors but does not correct upward bias in magnitude.

This article extends Walton's systematic review of race scholarship by analyzing three prestigious political science journals—Political Science Quarterly, American Political Science Review, and the Journal of Politics. Using computer-assisted text analysis informed by theory, it uncovers two distinct traditions: African American Politics (AAP), focusing on Black cultural distinctiveness; versus Race Relations Politics (RRP), emphasizing socio-political status relative to Whites.

A recent study claimed a gender citation gap exists across all international relations journals. This paper reexamines the same data, finding evidence suggests this gap is largely limited to elite papers—those with very high citations or appearing in top-tier journals.

Current political science classrooms often rely heavily on lectures, despite strong evidence supporting the educational benefits of small-group collaborative learning. While heterogeneous group work has shown positive outcomes for student learning, its adoption remains limited due to persistent challenges in implementation.

This article maps the gendered division of labor in Brazilian political science by asking two questions: which topics dominate the field’s flagship journals, and how do women’s and men’s authorship patterns distribute across those topics?

This article analyzes how political science in Brazil became an institutionalized academic field by tracing the expansion of graduate training and the rise of a formal evaluation regime.

This article maps how Brazilian social sciences have adopted the topic of Internet and politics by systematically analyzing conference papers from 2000 to 2011.

Many have noted the rise of the global in academic and popular discourse. We ask how this global frame of reference has been incorporated into secondary social science textbooks, a realm traditionally dominated by nationalist discourse. Utilizing a data set from more than 500 secondary school textbooks from around the world, spanning 1970–2008, we describe the incorporation of mentions of globalization and global citizenship into textbooks over time and then use a multilevel model to determine the textbook and country-level variables associated with mentions of each. We find that globalization and global citizenship are both predicted by the textbook content's reflection of the external world, including international events and mentions of human rights. However, no cross-national economic or political differences systematically predict incorporation of these topics. We argue that mentions of globalization and global citizenship in textbooks are two manifestations of a world culture that increasingly emphasizes interconnectedness in postnational society.

A review of the last four decades maps how rising computing power transformed the practice of political science. The study traces the development of computing resources and the gradual removal of computational limits on political methodologies.

Introduction: In a surprising shift, political science is transforming like never before. This article examines the changing landscape of how political scientists approach research through methodological innovation.

Abstract: Understanding the evolution of Ph.D. production and placement within political science departments between 1902 and 2000 reveals significant shifts shaping academic prominence.

Key Insight: This essay examines how quantitative metrics have transformed the assessment of political science departments and individuals over two decades, building on earlier reputational rankings. The authors introduce a unique database tracking citation counts for faculty members from Ph.D-granting institutions between 1960-2005.

If journals favor statistically significant results, the published literature can suffer from publication bias.

Published studies report statistically significant results—rejections of the null hypothesis—more often than unpublished studies. This systematic gap is commonly labeled “publication bias.”