Writing a Research Paper in Political Science: A Practical Guide to Inquiry, Structure, and Methods

by Lisa A. Baglione

Even students capable of writing excellent essays still find their first major political science research paper an intimidating experience. Crafting the right research question, finding good sources, properly summarizing them, operationalizing concepts and designing good tests for their hypotheses, presenting and analyzing quantitative as well as qualitative data are all tough-going without a great deal of guidance and encouragement. Writing a Research Paper in Political Science breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students what they need to do at each stage to successfully complete each component until the paper is finished. Practical summaries, recipes for success, worksheets, exercises, and a series of handy checklists make this a must-have supplement for any writing-intensive political science course.

Genres: Nonfiction, Textbooks, Political Science, School

280 pages, Paperback

First published August 23, 2011

Reviews

[Victoria]

Some copy editing mistakes which kind of undermined the book. BUT I did find it immensely useful for writing a social science research paper, which was the point. I thought having the recurring examples of three essays was very useful for seeing how different methods can be applied in different cases, but I also thought it got kind of excessive towards the end. I don’t want to read three whole research designs, and also conclusions, and also introductions. Just a bit too much. But very helpful.

[Jami Cole]

Every student who studies political science should write a research paper in political science when he or she is in the fourth year of a bachelor's degree. I know the excellent service that can help with writing a research paper in political science in order to students get excellent grades.

[Alizabeth Mariott]

I read this for my research methods class this past semester, and her content is deeply insightful. Her organization makes it easy to follow and look back on the content, and her addition of practical summaries of each chapter and a “recipe” for each new step made writing a research paper less scary.

[Shatha Sbeta]

Very helpful

[Rachel]

A useful teaching tool. Nothing more or less.

[Abigail]

if I'm going to have to read the whole textbook I'm going to get Goodreads credit for it

[Kimberly]

Every time this book compared writing a research paper to running a marathon I wanted to throw it out the window. Terrible analogy— not comparable. Other than that, the book was helpful

[Jess Grayson (bookspastbedtime)]

This was actually a really helpful book. I didn't necessarily like reading it since it was for school, but it definitely had merit.