Political Science Scope and Methods
An MIT OpenCourseWare course introducing the empirical research methods political scientists use to build and test arguments. Rather than teaching statistical software or data analysis techniques, it focuses on how to frame a research question, choose a case selection strategy, evaluate causal claims, and judge the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The material is meant to prepare undergraduates for independent thesis-level research in their junior and senior years while making them sharper readers of published political science studies. Course materials include the syllabus, lecture notes, readings, and assignments used in MIT's political science curriculum, published freely under a Creative Commons license with no certificate offered. The course does not center on one substantive topic in politics but on the logic and craft of political science inquiry itself, covering research design, measurement, and inference across the discipline's major methodological traditions.