Abstract: Most political science students are interested in the substance of politics and not in its methodology. We begin with a discussion of the goals of this book and why a scientific approach to the study of politics is more interesting and desirable than a “just-the-facts” approach. In this chapter we provide an overview of what it means to study politics scientifically. We begin with an introduction to how we move from causal theories to scientific knowledge, and a key part of this process is thinking about the world in terms of models in which the concepts of interest become variables that are causally linked together by theories. We then introduce the goals and standards of political science research that will be our rules of the road to keep in mind throughout this book. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the structure of this book.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-05-20
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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