Research methods

This page has information about empirical methods used in political science or administrative sciences (or social sciences in general). The page is divided into three parts: general, quantitative, and qualitative parts.

Methods and methodology in general and related computer applications:

• The interuniversity expertise center ProGAMMA develops and distributes innovative computer applications in the social and behavioral sciences.
• Social Research Update is an electronic journal publishing methods related articles
• The CTI centres contain details of computer software developed for use in research and teaching. There are special centres for sociology and policy sciences, economics, statistics and a lot more.
• Resources for Methods in Evaluation and Social Research

• Quantitative methods in public administration course material from department of political science, University of Arkansas
• Introductory Statistics Textbook from department of statistics, UCLA
• Working papers from department of statistics, UCLA, are available through the net
• Journal of Statistics Education
• search statistics related discussion group archives with key words
• Research methods in political science homepage (from APSA's Political Methodology Section)
• ECPR Eco gopher has information about 'ecological analysis' of election results and ECOL a program for analysing ecological data
• Information about multilevel analysis and related computer programs
• STATlib has statistical software, data and information
• A good place to study quantitative methods is the Essex Summer School for Social Science Data Analysis
• Material related to quantitative network analysis can be found from INSNALIB (International Network for Social Network Analysis LIBrary)
• Information about Structural Equations Models (SEMs) and related programs
• Gary King from Harvard University has made some statistical programs especially for political scientists
• If you don't have data, try connecting to one of the various data archives
• Information about q-methodology from q-method page or from q-methodology archive
• Information about Data Envelopment Analysis from DEA home page
• Content analysis resources page
• Resampling stats homepage (bootstrap, jack-knife etc.)
• Information about Meta-analysis
• Following discussion groups deal with statistical analysis:
  • sci.stat.edu
  • sci.stat.consult
• Discussion related to specific statistical programs:
  • SPSS home page
  • SPSS
  • SAS
  • Shazam
  • Limdep

• Information about computer applications for qualitative analysis:
  • ATLAS/ti
  • Nudist
  • Kwalitan
• Qualitative Report is an electronic journal
• The Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing from University of Kent has a program archive
• CAQDAS - Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software networking project
• Discussion about qualitative methods:
  • qual-software