400005 SE SE Methods for Doctoral Candidates (2014S)

This course is designed to provide doctoral students in the social sciences with an introduction to experimental methods. Experimental methodology has made a revival in the social sciences recently. One illustration of this development is the Economics Nobel Prize being awarded to Elinor Ostrom in 2009, who is a lab and field experimenter in political science. But there are several reasons why experiments are now a commonly used tool for young social scientists. First, experimentation allows researchers to establish causal inferences using the techniques of control and random assignment that cannot be approximated by observational studies. We will spend a substantial part of the course discussing the importance of control and randomization for the establishment of causal inferences. In doing so, we will compare experiments and analysis with observable data to carve out main differences as well as discuss possible ways in which both approaches could complement each other. We will thus discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of experimentation as a method of generating data for social science research. Second, researchers have found that experiments allow for the evaluation of nuanced aspects of theory that is often not possible with observational data and the investigation of processes largely unobservable and unmeasurable, such as mental processes, free-form communication between individuals, and physical and time responses to political stimuli. We will explore how these methods have been used as well.

This course introduces the logic and application of experimentation by focussing on laboratory, field, survey (with a special focus on online) and natural experiments. In this course students will not only learn about the strength and weaknesses of different experimental approaches, they will also learn how to interpret, design, and execute experiments themselves. This research methods course will be run as a hands-on practicum as much as possible.