Integrating Quantitative Methods into the Politics Curriculum: a seminar-based approach
Lead Research Organisation:
Newcastle University
Department Name: Sch of Geog, Politics and Sociology
Abstract
The report prepared by ESRC's Strategic Advisor for Quantitative Methods, John MacInnes, "Proposals to support and improve the teaching of quantitative methods at undergraduate level in the UK" recognizes the importance of integrating quantitative methods more thoroughly into the undergraduate curriculum. However, the report also recognizes one of the difficulties in doing this: social science departments in the UK tend to be divided into the "quants" and the "quals". Those with a qualitative orientation may be interested in integrating some more quantitative work into their modules, but lack the necessary background to feel comfortable doing so.
Training in quantitative research methods has gained a place in the undergraduate curriculum of most UK institutions: Adeney and Carey (2009) report that as of 2008, 64% of undergraduate programs offered a quantitative methods module, and a further 15% intended to do so in the future; a total of 53% of programmes made the module a requirement. While provision for training in undergraduate research methods is reasonably well established in politics, concerns remain about how well the teaching of quantitative methods is integrated into the broader curriculum. After conducting a workshop for undergraduate lecturers in the UK, Adeney and Carey found that "[m]ost participants agreed that the most effective way to teach research methods is to ensure that the course is not a stand-alone one, but is integrated into the ethos of the department - so students have the opportunity, and are encouraged, to use the skills they have gained in other courses." (2009, 198)
One barrier to integration is lack of widespread training in and comfort with quantitative methods among politics lecturers. MacInnes (2009) reports that those who teach quantitative methods in their departments feel isolated in their department, and that those with a more qualitative orientation feel uncomfortable with how to present more quantitative research to students.
This project will create a set of teaching materials, based on academic journal articles using quantitative methods. Each set of teaching materials will consist of a small group of quantitatively oriented journal articles to be discussed in a seminar, plus an explication of the relevant quantitative results and a discussion guide for the seminar leader. These background materials will be geared towards enabling a more qualitatively oriented lecturer and/or teaching assistant to discuss the quantitative aspects of the journal articles with confidence. The articles will be chosen with the students' likely level of understanding in mind.
In order to make the materials useful for staff at a number of universities, the project will create sets of materials for an introductory international relations module, a British politics module, and an American politics module. These materials will be created during a series of workshops that brings together quantitative and qualitative scholars from across the UK; each workshop will concentrate on one of the three modules targeted. These materials might also be used, albeit in a different way, by teachers of undergraduate methods modules.
These materials will be used initially by lecturers at Newcastle University, though they will be promoted much more widely. They will be distributed through OPOSSEM (Online Portal of Social Science Education Methodology; opossem.org), an NSF-funded source for quantitative methods teaching materials, and promoted on e-mail lists of relevant professional organizations. A one-day conference will be held at the end of the project to allow users of the materials to discuss their experiences; the conference will involve both former workshop participants and postgraduates who have run seminars using the materials. This conference will provide an important opportunity to assess the materials and discuss ways of improving them.
Training in quantitative research methods has gained a place in the undergraduate curriculum of most UK institutions: Adeney and Carey (2009) report that as of 2008, 64% of undergraduate programs offered a quantitative methods module, and a further 15% intended to do so in the future; a total of 53% of programmes made the module a requirement. While provision for training in undergraduate research methods is reasonably well established in politics, concerns remain about how well the teaching of quantitative methods is integrated into the broader curriculum. After conducting a workshop for undergraduate lecturers in the UK, Adeney and Carey found that "[m]ost participants agreed that the most effective way to teach research methods is to ensure that the course is not a stand-alone one, but is integrated into the ethos of the department - so students have the opportunity, and are encouraged, to use the skills they have gained in other courses." (2009, 198)
One barrier to integration is lack of widespread training in and comfort with quantitative methods among politics lecturers. MacInnes (2009) reports that those who teach quantitative methods in their departments feel isolated in their department, and that those with a more qualitative orientation feel uncomfortable with how to present more quantitative research to students.
This project will create a set of teaching materials, based on academic journal articles using quantitative methods. Each set of teaching materials will consist of a small group of quantitatively oriented journal articles to be discussed in a seminar, plus an explication of the relevant quantitative results and a discussion guide for the seminar leader. These background materials will be geared towards enabling a more qualitatively oriented lecturer and/or teaching assistant to discuss the quantitative aspects of the journal articles with confidence. The articles will be chosen with the students' likely level of understanding in mind.
In order to make the materials useful for staff at a number of universities, the project will create sets of materials for an introductory international relations module, a British politics module, and an American politics module. These materials will be created during a series of workshops that brings together quantitative and qualitative scholars from across the UK; each workshop will concentrate on one of the three modules targeted. These materials might also be used, albeit in a different way, by teachers of undergraduate methods modules.
These materials will be used initially by lecturers at Newcastle University, though they will be promoted much more widely. They will be distributed through OPOSSEM (Online Portal of Social Science Education Methodology; opossem.org), an NSF-funded source for quantitative methods teaching materials, and promoted on e-mail lists of relevant professional organizations. A one-day conference will be held at the end of the project to allow users of the materials to discuss their experiences; the conference will involve both former workshop participants and postgraduates who have run seminars using the materials. This conference will provide an important opportunity to assess the materials and discuss ways of improving them.
Planned Impact
The impact summary is structured around the following three questions:
Question 1: Who will benefit from this project?
This project is focused primarily on benefitting module leaders and teaching assistants in universities across the UK; it will also benefit postgraduate programs. Undergraduates would also benefit, as will their future employers.
Question 2: How will they benefit from this project?
The quantitative methods used by scholars of politics have become ever more advanced in recent years, which can make it difficult to find engaging, relevant articles that use techniques students can understand. By clearly identifying these articles, the project will make it easier for module leaders to integrate them into the appropriate module. In addition, the project provides the necessary support materials for module leaders to be able to use articles effectively in class to highlight and explicate quantitative methods.
Teaching assistants, frequently postgraduate students, will also benefit. Postgraduates are often put in the position of conducting seminars for a module, without having received much more than basic training in how to teach. Providing materials created by more experienced teachers and researchers will help teaching assistants conduct seminars in the specified subjects; in addition, it will provide these students with examples of what good discussion questions for seminars look like. It may also help to enhance the postgraduate's understanding of quantitative methods at a time when they are conducting their thesis research.
Many undergraduates do not have a strong sense of why and when quantitative methods are useful, even if they are introduced to those methods in the classroom. Fuller integration into the politics curriculum should help students understand how quantitative methods can be used to solve problems and answer questions. Increasing student understanding of how quantitative methods are used in substantive areas of politics will increase employability by helping students apply quantitative methods skills to real problems. Understanding how quantitative research can be used to study politics should also increase the number of students interested in using quantitative methods in their postgraduate theses.
Question 3: What will be done to ensure that they have the opportunity to benefit from this project?
-Using workshops to generate materials should help promote the materials more broadly to begin with. In addition to being aware of it themselves, the workshop participants can bring the project to the attention of colleagues at their home institutions. This should help provide a base of users that will promote the project as discuss it with others in their field.
-The project will be launched as part of OPOSSEM, an already established website for the dissemination of open-source teaching materials for quantitative methods in the social sciences. OPOSSEM has only recently been set up and funded, but it will be heavily promoted in the next couple of years. Because it provides a wide array of resources, the site should receive more traffic than the proposed project would receive on its own; this means that people may find the seminar guides, etc, even when they were not explicitly looking for them. At the same time, the proposed project would receive its own page on the OPOSSEM website, making it distinctive and clearly available.
-I will submit an article for publication in Politics or a similar journal, outlining both the importance of teaching quantitative methods across the curriculum and how the materials for this project can help by providing shortcuts for seminar leaders.
- Many organizations in the discipline, such as the Elections, Public Opinion and Parties section of the PSA and the Political Methodology group of the APSA, maintain e-mail lists that members use to communicate about new developments; the materials will be promoted on these e-mail lists.
Question 1: Who will benefit from this project?
This project is focused primarily on benefitting module leaders and teaching assistants in universities across the UK; it will also benefit postgraduate programs. Undergraduates would also benefit, as will their future employers.
Question 2: How will they benefit from this project?
The quantitative methods used by scholars of politics have become ever more advanced in recent years, which can make it difficult to find engaging, relevant articles that use techniques students can understand. By clearly identifying these articles, the project will make it easier for module leaders to integrate them into the appropriate module. In addition, the project provides the necessary support materials for module leaders to be able to use articles effectively in class to highlight and explicate quantitative methods.
Teaching assistants, frequently postgraduate students, will also benefit. Postgraduates are often put in the position of conducting seminars for a module, without having received much more than basic training in how to teach. Providing materials created by more experienced teachers and researchers will help teaching assistants conduct seminars in the specified subjects; in addition, it will provide these students with examples of what good discussion questions for seminars look like. It may also help to enhance the postgraduate's understanding of quantitative methods at a time when they are conducting their thesis research.
Many undergraduates do not have a strong sense of why and when quantitative methods are useful, even if they are introduced to those methods in the classroom. Fuller integration into the politics curriculum should help students understand how quantitative methods can be used to solve problems and answer questions. Increasing student understanding of how quantitative methods are used in substantive areas of politics will increase employability by helping students apply quantitative methods skills to real problems. Understanding how quantitative research can be used to study politics should also increase the number of students interested in using quantitative methods in their postgraduate theses.
Question 3: What will be done to ensure that they have the opportunity to benefit from this project?
-Using workshops to generate materials should help promote the materials more broadly to begin with. In addition to being aware of it themselves, the workshop participants can bring the project to the attention of colleagues at their home institutions. This should help provide a base of users that will promote the project as discuss it with others in their field.
-The project will be launched as part of OPOSSEM, an already established website for the dissemination of open-source teaching materials for quantitative methods in the social sciences. OPOSSEM has only recently been set up and funded, but it will be heavily promoted in the next couple of years. Because it provides a wide array of resources, the site should receive more traffic than the proposed project would receive on its own; this means that people may find the seminar guides, etc, even when they were not explicitly looking for them. At the same time, the proposed project would receive its own page on the OPOSSEM website, making it distinctive and clearly available.
-I will submit an article for publication in Politics or a similar journal, outlining both the importance of teaching quantitative methods across the curriculum and how the materials for this project can help by providing shortcuts for seminar leaders.
- Many organizations in the discipline, such as the Elections, Public Opinion and Parties section of the PSA and the Political Methodology group of the APSA, maintain e-mail lists that members use to communicate about new developments; the materials will be promoted on these e-mail lists.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Emily Clough (Principal Investigator) |
| Description | Overall, the project achieved two things: the production of a series of discussion guides and the development and dissemination of these guides through a series of workshops. The main goal of the project was to provide teaching materials for people to use that would help lecturers present quantitative methods in the classroom. As a result of the three collaborative workshops, the project produced six discussion guides integrating quantitative methods: two on American politics (media and foreign policy), two on British politics (vote choice and participation) and two on international relations (climate change and human rights). Each discussion guide contained approximately 10-12 questions, separated into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced; this was to enable the materials to be used easily by lecturers teaching at any level. The beginner questions addressed issues to do with measurement, simple univariate statistics and graphs; the intermediate questions focused more on bivariate analysis and statistical significance; the advanced questions asked about regression. Many of the discussion guides also included ideas for activities such as attempting to replicate some of the work done in the articles under discussion. These materials were distributed via OPOSSEM, an open educational resources site focused on teaching social science research methods, as well as to participants in the workshop. The materials have received over 400 views each on OPOSSEM. Participants used the materials at Newcastle University, University of Birmingham, University of the West of Scotland, Durham University and University of Vienna. Response to the materials has been largely positive. In order to ensure that the discussion guides spoke effectively to lecturers unfamiliar with quantitative methods, they were produced collaboratively during a series of three workshops held over the summer of 2013 at Newcastle University. The goal was to include both researchers using quantitative methods and those who focused more on the substantive area. The call for workshop participants went out broadly; announcements were made via the quantitative methods teacher list, but also via the British International Studies Association mailing list, the HEA's mailing list and the Political Studies Association newsletter, as well as a number of sub-field specific mailing lists. As a result, the workshops attracted individuals from a number of universities and career stages; scholars attended the workshops from universities as diverse as University of London, Cambridge University, DeMontfort University, Nottingham Trent and Durham University, among others. Each workshop included between 8-10 participants. At each workshop, approximately half the participants were nearing completion of the PhD; many of these individuals have now moved into full-time academic employment, including one as a Q-Step teaching fellow. One thing that became apparent during the workshops is the number of people without quantitative skills who were very interested in using quantitative methods in their teaching. The interest suggests that further outreach to more qualitatively oriented colleagues may be a source of further development for this project or similar projects. |
| Exploitation Route | The materials produced will continue to be available via OPOSSEM and promoted. The materials have already been used at at least four UK universities: Newcastle University, Durham University, University of the West of Scotland, and University of Birmingham. A number of workshop attendees are in the early stages of their careers; when asked about their use of the materials in the past year, several said that they had not had the chance to use them, but would do so when they were in charge of their own modules. Beyond just the materials generated, workshop attendees said that participation in the project had made them more likely to introduce quantitative material into their undergraduate modules. Many expressed interest in getting further training in quantitative methods, particularly so as to feel more comfortable presenting quantitative material in class. Further workshops that are particularly catered to those who do not feel comfortable with quantitative methods may be one area for the ESRC to consider broadening the impact of the QM initiative. |
| Sectors | Education Government Democracy and Justice |
| Description | The project was focused on generating material to be used by university lecturers. The goal of the project was to make it easier for lecturers to integrate substantive material into their quantitative modules, or vice versa. As noted in the Key Findings report, the materials have been distributed broadly, both through the workshops and through the website OPOSSEM.org. Those who participated in the workshops noted that they were using or planned to use the materials, and that participation itself had helped prepare them for the teaching a methods module or teaching a substantive module in a way that incorporates quantitative methods. While it is difficult to judge the precise impact this will have on society at large, the project is clearly part of a larger movement towards making sure social science students have stronger quantitative skills. A broad swath of funders, including the Nuffield Foundation, British Academy and ESRC, have recognised the importance of increasing the numeracy of British students. The techniques and materials developed as part of this project have hopefully moved us closer to that goal. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2011 |
| Sector | Creative Economy |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |