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How to Succeed in Political Science by Being Very Trying: A Methodological Sampler

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

Lee Sigelman
Lee Sigelman*
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University
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Extract

Daily we are bombarded by advice on how to succeed in political science. We are told what to read—everybody in Philadelphia reads World Politics, conclude media watchers Giles and Wright. We are told how to speak—practice phrases like “latent functional isomorphism” and “quasi-longitudinal typology,” concludes politico-linguist Betty Zisk, and success will be ours. We are even told where to dine—Tadich's or Sam's for fish in San Francisco, decrees gastronomical heavyweight Richard Brody.

Impeccable reading habits, a finely-honed vocabulary, and proper nutrition notwithstanding, we are in imminent danger of failure as political scientists unless we are able to establish our bona fides as data analysts. This requires that we master some canons of research methodology. Unfortunately, these methodological strictures have yet to be systematically codified. By presenting some basics of proper research methodology, by discussing some more sophisticated techniques (e.g., the Multiplicative N-Extender, the Levitating Measure Raiser), and by cataloguing some even more advanced routines (e.g., the Spontaneous Phytogeny Recapitulator, the Deviant Data Bender), the present exploratory study takes a tentative first step in the direction of a more systematic political science.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , Summer 1977 , pp. 302 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1977

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References

1 Giles, Micheal W. and Wright, Gerald C. Jr., “Political Scientists' Evaluation of Sixty-Three Journals,” PS (Summer 1975), pp. 254–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Zisk, Betty H., “The Compleat Jargoner: How to Obfuscate the Obvious Without Half Trying,” Western Political Quarterly (March 1970), pp. 55–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Brody, Richard A., “San Francisco in Five Hundreds Words or Less,” PS (Spring 1975), pp. 173–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Singer, J. David (“Cumulativeness in the Social Sciences: Some Counter-Prescriptions,” PS [Winter 1975], pp. 19–21)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has, however, catalogued techniques designed to prevent an unwelcome drift toward cumulation in research findings, and even a sociologist ( Shearing, Clifford D., “How to Make Theories Untestable: A Guide to Theorists,” The American Sociologist (February 1973], pp. 33–37 Google Scholar) has made a contribution in this regard.

5 Political scientists deserve the heartiest congratulations for their exemplary performance in this vital aspect of the research enterprise. As I shall report more fully in a forthcoming article titled “Colons: Ascending in Political Science, Descending in Sociology, Transverse in Economics,” more titles are colonized in the American Political Science Review than in any other social science discipline's major journal.

6 For a thoroughly wrong-headed critique of peeking, see Payne, James L. and Dyer, James A., “Betting After the Race Is Over: The Perils of Post Hoc Hypothesizing,” American Journal of Political Science, 19 (August 1975), 559–564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I intend to elaborate on the relationship between hypothesis rejection and social stigmatization in a forthcoming monograph entitled “The Cube Law of Rejection: Some Explorations in Logico-Deductive Heuristic Model-Building.” The logic underlying the cube law is naturally quite complex, but the law itself can be rendered parsimoniously in the arrowdynamic notation currently in vogue in political science: Rejection of Research Hypotheses → Rejection of Manuscript → Rejection of Tenure Application.

7 Chiswick, Barry R., “Earnings Inequality and Economic Development,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (February 1971), pp. 21–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Taylor, Michael and Herman, V. M., “Party Systems and Government Stability,” American Political Science Review (February 1971), pp. 28–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hibbs, Douglas A. Jr., “Industrial Conflict in Advanced Industrial Societies,” American Political Science Review, (December 1976), pp. 1033–1058.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Step 1 is from Banks, Arthur S., Cross Polity Time-Series Data (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971).Google Scholar Steps 2–10 are from Banks, “Industrialization and Development: A Longitudinal Analysis,” Economic Development and Cultural Change (January 1974), pp. 320–337.Google Scholar

10 This ill-considered epithet is used by Hudson, Michael C., “Data Problems in Quantitative Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Politics (July 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See, e.g., “The Assignment of Numbers to Rank Order Categories,” American Sociological Review (June 1970), pp. 515–524.

12 An encouraging discussion of the theoretical potential of factor analysis is presented by Armstrong, J. Scott, “Derivation of Theory by Means of Factor Analysis, or Tom Swift and His Electric Factor Analysis Machine,” The American Statistician (December 1967), pp. 17–21.Google Scholar