POL2020: Research Methods in Political Science: Home

This Guide is intended to help students in POL 2020: Research Methods in Political Science carry out the major research project for the course.

Your major research paper project will incorporate the skills you learn throughout the course. You will identify a specific social scientific research problem of interest to you, formulate a research question, set up an appropriate research design based on a theory, and analyze your findings. Along the way you will also conduct a literature review, discuss theory and hypothesis, apply a specific research methodology for your project, and analyze the data you use to back up your hypothesis.

The various sections of this guide are intended to help you at every stage of the project, from topic selection and refinement, through the collection of previously published research relevant to your topic, to identifying sources of data you can use as source material for analysis.

See the tabs above for starting points and specific resources that can be useful in carrying out this research.

If you have any questions moving forward, please feel free to contact me using the information on the right. I am happy to assist you with any aspect of research.

Cheng Library Catalog

Contents of the Cheng Library's collection.

JerseyCat

Search other library catalogs in New Jersey.

WorldCat

WorldCat is the world's largest and most comprehensive union catalog, currently featuring over 271 million bibliographic records that represent more than 1 billion individual items held by participating institutions. WorldCat includes records for books, videos, serial publications, articles, recorded books and music, electronic books, sheet music, genealogical references, cultural artifacts, digital objects, Web sites and much more. The cataloged works span thousands of years and nearly every form of human expression, with materials in over 470 languages from 112 countries and territories.

Some Other Sources of Books

Google Books (Advanced Book Search Screen)

Access to thousands of twentieth century titles in the public domain (i.e., with copyright dates of 1922 or earlier).

Hathi Trust Digital Library

HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. The HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the immense collections of partner institutions in digital form, preserving them securely to be accessed and used today, and in future generations. A substantial part of the collections accessible through the digital library are in the public domain and accessible, but not all of it, so be aware of this if you search it.

Internet Archive: E-Books and Texts

Over 6 million scanned texts public domain, including many twentieth century titles and a substantial collection of U.S. Government Documents.