Students will be encouraged to carefully critique this work, including both the theoretical framework and empirical design, to promote the understanding that research is an evolving and imperfect process. There is a particular emphasis on helping students develop research ideas and understand the research process.
Each student will write a paper (roughly 15 pages double-spaced) detailing a proposed theory and empirical strategy for the study of a topic of their choosing. These papers should identify an interesting empirical question in the field, review and analyze current scholarship on the topic, come up with a theory to answer the question, propose a methodological strategy for testing the theory, describe the data that would be used for this test, demonstrate an understanding of the limitations of the proposed strategy, and discuss the theory’s potential policy implications. The paper is due on the last day of class.