98869 - RESEARCH DESIGN AND BACHELOR THESIS

Anno Accademico 2024/2025

  • Modalità didattica: Convenzionale - Lezioni in presenza
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Laurea in European Studies (cod. 5983)

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

This course ‘Research Track: Academic Portfolio, Research Design and Bachelor Thesis (8 ECTS)’ aims to deepen students’ insights with their academic development, research design and bachelor thesis research. They will learn how to develop an effective research strategy and how to choose the most appropriate research method. By the end of the course, students will learn how to find their own research question, how to select the cases functional to their questions and how to look for qualitative or qualitative sources useful to write their thesis.

Contenuti

Research Design is a means to organize the theoretical and analytical elements of a piece of research. In order to provide evidence for your research question and demonstrate sufficient evaluation, a research design is integral to the investigative process. In the Social Sciences, there are many competing attempts to explain a process, a mechanism, or a class of events. Despite the often-bewildering number of studies, many fail to advance our common knowledge through under-specified or under-developed research designs. The goal of this course is to develop students’ awareness and abilities in considering, building, and evaluating research designs not only for their own thesis and subsequent work but also for others’ research efforts.

Testi/Bibliografia

The main textbook is Loveless, Matthew. 2023. Political Analysis: A Guide to Data and Statistics. Sage.

  • One can buy this book from Sage [sagepub.co.uk] and use the discount code UK23BOLOG [30%]
    • NB: As the author, I can make earlier, un-edited drafts of these chapters available on Toledo.
  • Other readings will be made available electronically on Toledo.

Metodi didattici

Lectures and Activity Seminars: 18 hours online instruction (lecture); 6 hours in-person activities (seminar).

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Assessment will be through bi-weekly evaluations, for three assignments in total (for the Research Design component). These assignments will ask students to identify key elements, recall and apply concepts discussed in the lectures and seminars to new problems, and synergize information. These three (3) assignments will be averaged with three (3) assignments from Academic Portfolio for a single, final mark.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

Course material includes presentation slides, book chapters, academic articles, documents, and other materials. These will be made fully available to students via Toledo.

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Paul Matthew Loveless