2024/25 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

PIED5805M Research Dissertation in Political Science

60 creditsClass Size: 30

Module manager: Dr Kris Dunn
Email: K.P.Dunn@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semesters 1 & 2 (Sep to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2024/25

This module is not approved as an Elective

Module summary

This module provides an intensive introduction on how to design, conduct, and report research in Political Science. As this is a political science module, we will focus on a scientific approach: using methods that are falsifiable, parsimonious, precise, and replicable. While the techniques learned in this module are applicable across the social sciences – and in many ways, across all fields of scientific inquiry – we will focus on research designs appropriate to answer politically relevant questions. Through this module, you will learn how to formulate a research question, how to design a research project that will allow you to (begin to) answer that question, and how to report the results of your research. Through in-depth reading on research design, a series of practice-based workshops, frequent feedback from your peers and the module tutors, and your own undertaking of an independent research project, you will gain the knowledge and practical experience necessary to both evaluate the research of others and design, conduct, and report your own research projects in the social sciences.

Objectives

This module will provide students with the knowledge and skills to write a detailed and coherent research design. Students will learn the intricacies of the social-scientific process and how we use that process to formulate and test hypotheses about political phenomena. In conjunction with the skills learned in the Data Analysis and Data Collection modules, students will be capable of designing, conducting, and reporting on the results of an empirical research project.

Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:

Skills specific outcomes

1. Identify and reflect on the various elements of research design in social science.
2. Critically assess research design in social-scientific research.
3. Demonstrate the ability to operationalise concepts in empirical research.
4. Understand how to gather data from appropriate populations and/or samples to address formulated research questions and hypotheses.
5. Demonstrate the ability to write a coherent, informative, and practical research design.

Subject specific outcomes
7. Demonstrate the ability to write a completed piece of empirical research in the format of a standard journal article in political science.
8. Demonstrate the ability to integrate your research into the broader literature that your research is situated in.

Syllabus

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Practicals	10	2.00	20.00
Private study hours			280.00
Total Contact hours			20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			300.00

Private study

Students are expected to:

do all required readings for the module ahead of the workshops,

find, read, and critically engage with research on a particular topic of interest that they are interested in conducting research in,

further acquaint themselves with the data collection and data analysis techniques necessary to conduct their own research,

develop and write a research proposal for their dissertation project,

provide feedback on the research proposals of other students,

implement the research proposal by conducting and reporting the research.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Workshops are discussion-based and will have two formative functions:
1. students will focus on analysing and critiquing published research in discussion with peers and workshop tutors thereby receiving feedback on their analyses and critiques,
2. students will participate in brief writing exercises for different elements of their research design; their peers will provide an analysis and critique of these exercises that can be used to refine their proposal.
Additionally:
3. students will submit a fully formed 3000-word research proposal to their dissertation supervisor who will provide detailed comments that can be used to refine their dissertation.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Assignment	Coursework	100.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

There is no reading list for this module

Last updated: 29/04/2024 16:19:21

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