Document Type

Graduate Syllabus

Date

Spring 2025

School

Diplomacy

Course Number

DIPL 6310

Course Description

This course has two major objectives: (1) to help students develop the ability to understand and critique research and policy reports relevant to international issues, and (2) to enable students develop competency to initiate, design, and conduct empirical scientific research relevant to international issues. To this end, the course deals with (a) substantive problem development, (b) research question and hypothesis formulation, (c) concept/variable definition and operationalization/measurement, (d) data collection and analysis techniques, and (e) result interpretation. Ethical issues in empirical research endeavors dealing with human subjects will also be discussed briefly.

Empirical research may be broadly divided into quantitative and qualitative methods. The former, perhaps some consider as "more scientific," deals with "statistical comparisons" of the characteristics of the cases that are being studied, while the latter is based on the "researcher's informed understanding" of the characteristics of the cases. The choice of whether to apply the quantitative or qualitative approach depends on the research question(s) asked and on the nature of the data available. Be it as it may, this course will interrogate the similarities and differences between the two, and the conditions under which a researcher may choose one over the other. Also, as part of the requirements for the quantitative part of the course, computerized data analysis techniques using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) will be briefly introduced.

It is hoped that this survey of the most important concepts and principles of empirical scientific research will lay a strong foundation for a more in-depth research endeavor in your DIPL 6311. An important component of this course is, therefore, the development of a well-grounded research proposal.

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