210182 UE BA 4.2 /E1: Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research (2009W)

The seminar "Quantitative Methods and Political Behaviour in the European Union" provides political science students with the opportunity to deepen their knowledge in both quantitative methods and the classical field of political behaviour. The emphasis of this seminar is on the practical application of the methodological concepts and quantitative statistical tools presented by Prof. Kritzinger in the course "Quantitative Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung". Participation to her course is therefore a prerequisite to attend this seminar. The seminar will be divided into a theoretical, a methodological and a statistical part. In the first part (3 weeks), students will get a general overview of the main schools of thought in the field of political behaviour (e.g., rational choice, sociological, psychological). Students will concentrate on the literature that studied political behaviour in the European Union. In particular, students will familiarise with essential concepts in the field, such as support, trust, attitudes or perception. The second part of the course looks at these issues from a methodological perspective (3 weeks). This is primarily done through the analysis of questions derived from mass surveys (e.g., Eurobarometer), and then by uncovering research design topics (e.g., types of variables, levels of measurement, research question, hypotheses) in the literature previously analysed. The third part of the course (7 weeks) will concentrate on the statistical analysis and testing of hypotheses gathered from the literature and generated by the students. Statistical work will be performed in class with the help of the statistical package SPSS 15.0 and will cover core statistical topics, such as mean, variance, and correlation.