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| Foreword | |
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| Preface | |
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| Doing Research | |
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| Social Research | |
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| Types of Political Research | |
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| Research Mix | |
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| Evaluating Different Types of Research | |
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| Ethics of Political Research | |
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| Political Theories and Research Topics | |
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| Causality and Political Theory | |
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| What Does Good Theory Look Like? | |
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| Example of Elegant Research: Phillip Converse | |
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| To Quantify or Not | |
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| Choice of A Topic | |
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| Engineering Research | |
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| Theory-Oriented Research | |
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| Development of A Research Design | |
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| Observations, Puzzles, and the Construction of Theories | |
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| Machiavellian Guide To Developing Research Topics | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Importance of Dimensional Thinking | |
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| English as A Language for Research | |
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| Ordinary Language | |
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| Proper Use of Multidimensional Words | |
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| Example of Dimensional Analysis | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Problems of Measurement: Accuracy | |
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| Reliability | |
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| Reliability as a Characteristic of Concepts | |
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| Testing the Reliability of a Measure | |
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| Validity | |
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| Some Examples | |
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| Checks for Validity | |
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| Impact of Random and Nonrandom Errors | |
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| Importance of Accuracy | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Problems of Measurement: Precision | |
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| Precision In Measures | |
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| Precision In Measurement | |
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| Innate Nature of Levels of Measurement | |
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| The Sin of Wasting Information | |
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| Enrichment of the Level of Precision in Measurement | |
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| Examples of Enrichment | |
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| Quantifiers and Nonquantifiers Again | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Causal Thinking and Design of Research | |
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| Causality: An Interpretation | |
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| Elimination of Alternative Causal Interpretations | |
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| Summary | |
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| A Few Basics of Research Design | |
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| Designs without a Control Group | |
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| Use of a Control Group | |
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| True Experiment | |
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| Designs for Political Research | |
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| Special Design Problem for Policy Analysis: Regression to the Mean | |
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| Use of Varied Designs and Measures | |
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| Example of Varied Designs and Measures | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Holding A Variable Constant | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Selection of Observations for Study | |
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| Sampling From A Population of Potential Observations | |
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| Random Sampling | |
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| Quasi-Random Sampling | |
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| Purposive Sampling | |
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| Selection of Cases for Case Studies | |
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| Censored Data | |
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| When Scholars Pick, the Cases They're Interested In | |
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| When Nature Censors Data | |
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| Selection Along The Dependent Variable: Don't Do It! | |
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| Selection of Cases for Case Studies (AGAIN) | |
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| Another Strategy, However: Single-Case Studies Selected for The Relationship between The Independent and Dependent Variables | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Introduction to Statistics: Measuring Relationships for Interval Data | |
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| Statistics | |
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| Importance of Levels of Measurement | |
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| Working With Interval Data | |
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| Regression Analysis | |
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| Correlation Analysis | |
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| Correlation and Regression Compared | |
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| Problem of Measurement Error | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Introduction to Statistics: Further Topics on Measurement of Relationships | |
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| Measures of Relationships for Ordinal Data | |
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| Measures of Relationships for Nominal Data | |
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| Dichotomies and Regression Analysis | |
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| Logit and Probit Analysis | |
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| Multivariate Analysis | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Introduction to Statistics: Inference, or How to Gamble on Your Research | |
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| Logic of Measuring Significance | |
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| Example of Statistical Inference | |
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| Hypothesis Testing | |
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| Null Hypothesis | |
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| Example: x<sup>2</sup> | |
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| Sampling Distribution | |
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| Importance of N | |
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| Problem of Independent Observations | |
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| Significance Test: Always Necessary? | |
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| Polling and Significance Tests | |
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| Uses and Limitations of Statistical Tests | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Further Discussion | |
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| Where Do Theories Come From? | |
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| Selected Bibliography | |
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| Index | |