Political Science 220: Analyzing Politics

Welcome to the Library Research Guide for PSCI 220: Analyzing Politics! It includes information and resources designed to aid you in locating research and managing sources for your assignments this semester.

For research questions:

• Email me at schaez1@stolaf.edu or schedule a research consultation if you have any questions!

For writing help:

• Make an appointment with the Writing Desk for assistance with organizing ideas and improving your writing style.

Slide 1: PSCI 220: Qualitative Data Library Session

Slide 2: What are our goals for today?

• Think more about your topics and generate some potential keywords
• Learn how to use the following to conduct research for your Qualitative Research Project:
• Suggested Online Resources (Pew Research Center)
• Gov Sources (voxgov, Google Advanced Search)
• Library Resources (A-Z Database List, Politics Collection, Carleton’s Data Guides)
• Learn how to navigate to the library research guide
• And take some time to start thinking about your next steps!

Slide 3: Time to Brainstorm!

Take a few minutes to write down or type in a Google Doc or email draft on your own:

1. What you already know about your topic
2. What you still want or need to find out about this topic
3. Where might you find this information?

Slide 4: Identifying Keywords

Look back through what you've just written. What are some potential keywords you could use to look for research on this topic? Chat with your partner (if applicable) or another classmate about what you came up with.
For example, if I were researching civic engagement amongst young adults, I might list terms such as civic engagement, young adult, action, involvement, voting, community, impact, etc.

Slide 5: Worktime! Choose your own adventure

Some suggestions on how to use this time:

• Browse Topics in Pew Research Center
  • You can use filters after selecting a topic to view a more focused list of reports and/or short reads. Remember: reports have a pdf option available and more detailed methodology info
• Try looking for government reports, speeches, interviews, politician social media posts, etc. on voxgov or by using Google’s Advanced Search features.
• Look up news about and/or from your topic in one of the news databases. Do you notice any immediate themes about your topic in the headlines?
• Find scholarly articles relevant to your research in Politics Collection or another Political Science database.
  • Try a variety of keywords that you brainstormed earlier and don’t forget about the filters! You can add keywords like interview or qualitative too
  • Use a permalink so you can get back to its page!

Slide 1: PSCI 220: Quantitative Data Library Session

Slide 2: What were our goals last time?

Learned how to use the following to conduct research for your Qualitative Research Project:

• Suggested Online Resources (Pew Research Center)
• Gov Sources (voxgov, Google Advanced Search)
• Library Resources (A-Z Database List, Politics Collection, Carleton’s Data Guides)
• Learned how to navigate to the library research guide
• Took some time to start thinking about your next steps

Slide 3: What are our goals for today?

• Think about your topics from a quantitative perspective and generate some potential keywords (again!)
• Review the following resources that you can potentially use for your Quantitative Research Project:
  • Public Opinion Datasets (Pew Research Center)
  • Social Science Datasets (ICPSR)
  • Demographic / Location Based Datasets (Social Explorer)
  • Random Gov Datasets (data.gov)
  • Guides to other datasets from St. Olaf and Carleton
• Reminder to use the library research guide
• And take some time to start thinking about your next steps!

Slide 4: Remember the brainstorming we did last time?

We’re doing it again: this time thinking about your quantitative project! Take a few minutes to chat with your partner or someone nearby, or write down or type in a Google Doc or email draft on your own:

1. What you already know about your topic
2. What you still want or need to find out about this topic and/or what kind of dataset you think you’re looking for

You may or may not need keywords depending on the resource you choose.

Slide 5: Pew Research Center

Pros:

• Focus on public opinion datasets
• Excellent documentation
• They clean up datasets before releasing them!
• You can search for datasets/databases, but it’s very narrow what it shows as “relevant”

Cons:

• Delay between report releases and dataset releases
• The dataset filters are currently broken :(
• Browse if you can, ask Ann for help if you need a public opinion dataset

Slide 6: ICPSR

Pros:

• Huge variety of social science datasets
• Lots of filters and ways to search for datasets
• Often links to affiliated scholarly articles

Cons:

• Not just poli sci related datasets
• Search interface is almost too overwhelming
• Some data is restricted use
• Sometimes the downloads can be glitchy

Slide 7: Social Explorer

Pros:

• Focus on demographic data
• Easy to use interface
• Relatively simple to focus on the variables / region that you need
• The maps are fun!

Cons:

• Needs to be a location based dataset
• Limited number of datasets available
• Need to know what you’re looking for
• Moving from the maps to datasets can be awkward

Note:

• If you want a more granular version of the data in Social Explorer, try IPUMS

Slide 8: data.gov

Pros:

• Easier than searching individual gov websites
• Includes some state and local level government data

Cons:

• Really random datasets (inconsistent coverage)
  Data isn’t always cleaned up to the same standards as the other suggested resources
  Be wary of taking on too big of a dataset
  Unclear what datasets have been/will be removed

Slide 9: To consider…

Think about the resources we covered today:

• Which one seems the most promising for your quantitative paper topic? 
• Least promising?
• What information will you need to find elsewhere?

Slide 10: Ann’s caveat + how to get help

Slide 11: Worktime! Choose your own adventure

Some suggestions on how to use this time:

• Browse for Public Opinion datasets in Pew Research Center
  • Does your dataset include any related reports?
• Find social science datasets in ICPSR
  • You can conduct keyword searches in ICPSR as a whole, or within one of their themed data collections. Remember to use the filters!
• Look at the demographic / location datasets in Social Explorer
  • The maps are a fun visualization (as are the data snacks), but the data tables are the easiest to manage. You must select specific variables.
• See if data.gov has a dataset for a variety of government information
  • Keep in mind the datasets are not consistently formatted
• None of the above apply to your topic? Check out the Carleton and St. Olaf Statistics guides
  • Remember: Carleton has access to Statista