Empirical Research Methods (POL-18700)

News

Office Hours Prof. Shikano: No office hours during the university vacation. Please contact the secretary.

If you are coming to Prof. Shikano's office hours (during the semester), please sign-up using the list on the door of room D 312.

Course Description

Empirical social science techniques are crucial not only for testing theories but also for further kinds of projects, which require systematic data collection and analysis. By using such techniques, we aim to make sound inferences, which enables us to know more from what we can observe. For sound inferences, one needs sound knowledge in formal language, philosophy of science, research designs, as well as details in data collection and processing techniques.

This lecture introduces to the individual topics above and their implementation in concrete research situations. At the end of the lecture, students should be able to understand how to make inferences in empirical social research as well as to evaluate whether existing empirical projects make sound inferences.

The lecture follows the structure of the script, which will be available in ILIAS.