Chapter 3 Questions

An Internet search engine like Yahoo is best used to find _________ sources.

Nonscholarly

Each of the following can be used as shortcuts when reading the literature in your literature review, except: a. An abstract b. A preface c. The works cited d. A book review

*c. The works cited

Which of the following is not considered to be a nonscholarly source?

a. The Washington Post b. Vanity Fair *c. The Journal of Politics d. The Economist

A(n) ___________ is often found at the beginning of scholarly article and will usually include a description of the contents of an article, including the research question, the theory and hypotheses, the data and methods used to test the hypotheses, and the results and conclusions.

*a. Abstract b. Literature review c. Summary d. Outline

The peer-review process for scholarly journal articles usually includes all of the following, except: a. The reviewers are selected by the author b. A blind peer-review process c. Reviewed by experts on the subject d. The reviewers determine if the article makes a significant contribution

*a. The reviewers are selected by the author

Which of the following would be a good political science research question?

*a. Why do some people vote in elections while others do not? b. Who won the 2012 presidential election? c. What countries fought in World War I? d. A market economy is better than a centralized economy.

What information should you include in a citation of an electronic source?

You should include as much information as is available including the author or creator of the page and the title of the article as well as the complete Internet address at which the article was found, the publication date, and the date you last accessed the page.

How can you tell the difference between a scholarly and nonscholarly source?

You can differentiate scholarly works from nonscholarly ones by looking for a few characteristics. Most important, professional articles and books published in political science or other disciplines will often go through a peer-review process. The most common peer-review standard is that a journal or book editor will send an article or book manuscript submitted for publication to one or more scholars with expertise in the topical area of the article. The review is performed in a blind fashion, in which the reviewers are not told the author's name to ensure that the review is fair. Otherwise, reviewers may be inclined to reject a piece authored by a particular author based on a personal grievance or accept a piece written by a friend. The blind process ensures that reviewers will assess only the quality of the work. The editor will rely on the peer reviewers' comments to suggest revisions of the work and assess whether or not the work makes a sufficient contribution to the literature to deserve publication. The peer-review process helps assure that the work published in scholarly journals and books is of the best possible quality and of the most value to the discipline. It also assures the reader that, although there still may be mistakes or invalid or unreliable claims, the article or book has been vetted by one or more experts on the topic. Alternatively, some scholarly journals and books are reviewed only by the editorial staff. Although this method provides a check on the quality of the work, it is usually not as rigorous as a blind peer-review. The type of review a journal or book publisher uses will typically be explained in the journal or on the journal's or publisher's website. In addition to a peer-review process, some other indicators can differentiate scholarly from nonscholarly work. Scholarly articles and books are usually written by academics, journalists, political actors, or other political practitioners, so looking for a description of the authors is the place to start. Scholarly books are published by both university presses and commercial presses for a professional audience rather than a general audience. As such, the work will include complex analyses and be written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with the literature and method. Scholarly work will also cite other scholarly sources, which can be easily verified by scanning the works cited, footnotes, or endnotes.

What is the purpose of a literature review? Why would you include one in a research paper?

A literature review can have many different purposes. At the bare minimum, it can be used to establish that the proposed study does not totally duplicate someone else's work. But a literature review can be used for several other, often complementary purposes. It may be used as a systematic survey of the literature to learn about what others have discovered, or it can help a researcher identify important research questions that have not been addressed fully by others. It may also be helpful in identifying the data or methods that others have used to answer specific questions, or the research strategies that have worked well or failed. Alternatively, a literature review can help narrow or focus a research topic, or efficiently guide the investigation to a fruitful conclusion. Reviewing the literature is also a critical component of motivating and developing a specific research question, identifying potential relationships between concepts and to identify researchable hypotheses, learning how others have defined and measured key concepts.

Why might a research question that dwells on discrete or narrow factual issues limit the significance of a research project?

Although important, facts alone are not enough to yield scientific explanations. What is missing is a relationship—that is, the association, dependence, or covariance of the values of one variable with the values of another. Researchers are generally interested in how to advance and test generalizations relating one phenomenon to another. In the absence of such generalizations, factual knowledge of the type called for by the following research questions will be fundamentally limited in scope

Please provide an example of an empirical research question and an example of a normative research question. What is the difference between the two questions?

An example of a normative research question is, "Should states give tax breaks to new businesses willing to locate within their borders?" This type of research question seeks an indication of what is good or of what should be done. Although scientific knowledge may be helpful in answering questions like these, it cannot provide the answers without regard for an individual's personal values or preferences. What someone ultimately likes or dislikes, values or rejects, is involved in the answers to a question like this. Alternatively, an example of an empirical research question is, "Why do some people vote in elections while others do not?" The answer to this question could make a significant contribution to the accumulation of our understanding of and knowledge about the political phenomena of voting, and is not dependent on the researcher's personal opinion or values.

Why is a literature review that focuses on concepts and ideas rather than individual articles or books usually more effective?

Focusing on concepts and ideas is a much more sophisticated literature review because it integrates previous research along conceptual and methodological lines and provides a more effective organization for the researcher to explain the base of knowledge and how the current project fits into that literature. Focusing on ideas and concepts relays to the reader how previous work fits together and how the current work build on previous work. Focusing on individual articles or books makes it more difficult to explain how the previous work fits together, or how the current work builds on it.

Newspapers, magazines, television news programs, and Internet blogs are all examples of ___________ sources.

Nonscholarly

. A search engine like JSTOR is best used to find ___________ sources.

Scholarly

. Books and articles written by political scientists and other academics or political practitioners are good examples of ___________ sources.

Scholarly

Each of the following is among the many reasons to review previous research in a literature review for an empirical research project, except

*a. To analyze your data b. To see what has and has not been investigated c. To identify potential relationships between concepts and to identify researchable hypotheses d. To discover how a research project is related to the work of others

Each of the following are good ways to find additional items for your literature review after you have found one good journal article except for: a. Review articles that cited the article you found b. Try new search words in your search engine c. Review articles cited by the article you found d. Search for other articles written by the same author as the article you found

*b. Try new search words in your search engine

Which of the following is not considered to be a scholarly source? a. The American Journal of Political Science b. The American Political Science Review c. The Washington Post d. The Journal of Politics

*c. The Washington Post

A relationship between two variables can be described by each of the following, except

*d. Discrete

Why are research questions that focus on normative issues inappropriate for the empirical study of political science?

Answer will vary, but the heart of the answer should be that normative issues cannot be answered through empirical observation. The notion of best is incompatible with empirical observation and analysis.

Why would it be better to use a search engine like Google Scholar or database like the Social Science Citation index or JSTOR instead of a search engine like Yahoo to find sources for a political science research paper?

Answer will vary, but the key element in the answer is that the student should highlight the differences in the sources these different tools will produce. A commercial search engine that searches the web will likely return many more nonscholarly results that are not as useful in political science research project.

A ________________ is a systematic examination and interpretation of the literature for the purpose of informing further work on a topic.

Literature Review

Which of the following is an important characteristic of empirical political science research questions, except

a. A focus on discrete facts *b. A focus on addressing a political phenomenon c. Focus on narrow factual issues d. Focused on reaching normative conclusions

Which of the following is an important purpose of a literature review?

a. Specifying the sampling distribution b. Choosing a unit of analysis c. Finding as many sources as possible *d. Discovering how a research project is related to others

Which of the following would not be a good topic to discuss in a literature review?

a. Validity problems in previous work b. Reliability problems in previous work c. Theories offered in previous work *d. The number of sources cited by previous work