Comparative Politics in Transition - Content Guidelines for Paper and Defense

Note that this is only a guideline.  Do not expect that quetions here will be the only questions.

It all boils down to proving that the method matches the hypothesis.  You can be done in many ways, but the standards are:

1. Does your hypothesis' core objective match the objective of the method you use?  (will you use regression in a correlative hypothesis?)
2. Does the data gathering procedure that you propose satisfy a) your hypothesis if the hypothesis is turned into a question (does authoritarianism lead to development?).  b).  Is the procedure (survey, interview) the one that is used in your method?
3. Do your proposed questions lead to the right answer (findings) that will prove your hypothesis?

The research that you did also proves to me how well you know the method.

In general:

1. What are the parameters of your variables?  Sample what are the parameters of political participation as a variable? Does it only include voting? how about rallying? How about membership in a party?  How about talking about issues?  If qualitative - how can these be described.  If quantitative - how can these be counted or measured?

If qualitative:

1. How many selections (people to interview)?
2. How is data analyzed (in a phenomenology, in a case study, in a narrative)?
3. What are the data gathering methods or procedures that you will use? (interview, focus group, etc.)
4. What are the available sources of data?

If quantitative:

1. How many respondents (people to survey)?
2. What scale (range of numbers for rating) did you use? 1-5? 1-3, 1-7?  What does the range describe (effective? corrupt)?
3. Are your variables nominal? Ordinal? Are there dummy variables?
4. Are there available sources of data.