Deck 3: Beginning the Research Process: Identifying a Research Topic, Developing Research Questions, and Reviewing the Literature

Question 1

Which of the following is an important characteristic of empirical political science research questions, except

A) A focus on discrete facts
B) A focus on addressing a political phenomenon
C) Focus on narrow factual issues
D) Focused on reaching normative conclusions

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Which of the following would not be a good topic to discuss in a literature review?

A) Validity problems in previous work
B) Reliability problems in previous work
C) Theories offered in previous work
D) The number of sources cited by previous work

Answer 2

D

Question 3

A relationship between two variables can be described by each of the following, except

A) Association
B) Covariance
C) Dependence
D) Discrete

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Each of the following can be used as shortcuts when reading the literature in your literature review, except

A) An abstract
B) A preface
C) The works cited
D) A book review

Question 5

What is the purpose of a literature review? Why would you include one in a research paper?

Question 6

Each of the following are good ways to find additional items for your literature review after you have found one good journal article except for

A) Review articles that cited the article you found
B) Try new search words in your search engine
C) Review articles cited by the article you found
D) Search for other articles written by the same author as the article you found

Question 7

Which of the following is not considered to be a scholarly source?

A) The American Journal of Political Science
B) The American Political Science Review
C) The Washington Post
D) The Journal of Politics

Question 8

Why are research questions that focus on normative issues inappropriate for the empirical study of political science?

Question 9

A ________________ is a systematic examination and interpretation of the literature for the purpose of informing further work on a topic.

Question 10

Which of the following would be a good political science research question?

A) Why do some people vote in elections while others do not?
B) Who won the 2012 presidential election?
C) What countries fought in World War I?
D) A market economy is better than a centralized economy.

Question 11

An Internet search engine like Yahoo is best used to find _________ sources.

Question 12

Newspapers, magazines, television news programs, and Internet blogs are all examples of ___________ sources.

Question 13

The peer-review process for scholarly journal articles usually includes all of the following, except

A) The reviewers are selected by the author
B) A blind peer-review process
C) Reviewed by experts on the subject
D) The reviewers determine if the article makes a significant contribution

Question 14

A relationship between two variables can be described by each of the following, except

A) Association
B) Covariance
C) Dependence
D) Discrete

Question 15

Books and articles written by political scientists and other academics or political practitioners are good examples of ___________ sources.

Question 16

Which of the following is not considered to be a nonscholarly source?

A) The Washington Post
B) Vanity Fair
C) The Journal of Politics
D) The Economist

Question 17

A search engine like JSTOR is best used to find ___________ sources.

Question 18

A(n) ___________ is often found at the beginning of scholarly article and will usually include a description of the contents of an article, including the research question, the theory and hypotheses, the data and methods used to test the hypotheses, and the results and conclusions.

A) Abstract
B) Literature review
C) Summary
D) Outline

Question 19

Each of the following is among the many reasons to review previous research in a literature review for an empirical research project, except

A) To analyze your data
B) To see what has and has not been investigated
C) To identify potential relationships between concepts and to identify researchable hypotheses
D) To discover how a research project is related to the work of others

Question 20

Which of the following is an important purpose of a literature review?

A) Specifying the sampling distribution
B) Choosing a unit of analysis
C) Finding as many sources as possible
D) Discovering how a research project is related to others

Question 21

Why might a research question that dwells on discrete or narrow factual issues limit the significance of a research project?

Question 22

Why is a literature review that focuses on concepts and ideas rather than individual articles or books usually more effective?

Question 23

Why would it be better to use a search engine like Google Scholar or database like the Social Science Citation index or JSTOR instead of a search engine like Yahoo to find sources for a political science research paper?

Question 24

What information should you include in a citation of an electronic source?

Question 25

Please provide an example of an empirical research question and an example of a normative research question. What is the difference between the two questions?

Question 26

How can you tell the difference between a scholarly and nonscholarly source?