Political Science Methodology
| Title | Μεθοδολογία των Πολιτικών Επιστημών / Political Science Methodology |
| Code | ΠΑΥ01 |
| Faculty | Social and Economic Sciences |
| School | Political Sciences |
| Cycle / Level | 2nd / Postgraduate |
| Teaching Period | Winter/Spring |
| Coordinator | Ioannis Andreadis |
| Common | No |
| Status | Active |
| Course ID | 600027864 |
Programme of Study: PMS POLITIKĪ ANALYSĪ 2025
Registered students: 11
| Orientation | Attendance Type | Semester | Year | ECTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KORMOS | Compulsory Course | 1 | 1 | 10 |
| Academic Year | 2025 – 2026 |
| Class Period | Winter |
| Faculty Instructors | |
| Weekly Hours | 3 |
| Total Hours | 39 |
| Class ID | 600281702
|
Course Type 2021
Specific Foundation
Mode of Delivery
- Face to face
Digital Course Content
- e-Study Guide https://qa.auth.gr/en/class/1/600281702
- eLearning (Moodle): https://elearning.auth.gr/course/view.php?id=14657
Language of Instruction
- Greek (Instruction, Examination)
- English (Instruction, Examination)
Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete this course acquire knowledge, abilities and skills associated with levels 7 and 8 and they learn to use advanced methodological tools which have numerous applications in their chosen field of study. The course aims to familiarize students with data collection tools, data analysis methods, selection criteria of the most suitable method and the sources of available data to analyze political phainomena.
In particular, by completing successfully this course, students will have acquired the following skills and capabilities:
To be in a position to design a research project.
To be capable of searching, evaluating and documenting sources.
To be capable to organize and conduct a web survey
To be capable to select the most suitable data analysis method and apply it
To be able to comprehend the key elements of an empirical research and to evaluate the findings that result from data analysis and/or theoretical reasoning.
General Competences
- Apply knowledge in practice
- Retrieve, analyse and synthesise data and information, with the use of necessary technologies
- Adapt to new situations
- Make decisions
- Work autonomously
- Work in teams
- Work in an international context
- Work in an interdisciplinary team
- Generate new research ideas
- Be critical and self-critical
- Advance free, creative and causative thinking
Course Content (Syllabus)
The “Political Science Methodology” course is addressed to the incoming students and aims at their familiarization with research methods that will be useful in their study period, most notably during the writing-up of their course essays and the completion of their MA dissertation. The course attempts to present in a comprehensive manner the basic methods of quantitative research. It, also, includes a seminar focusing on the subject of academic writing and its prerequisites. More specifically the course coves the following methods:
Web surveys: advantages and disadvantages of using the internet for conducting political research, the usage of open software for doing political internet research
Introduction to R, Rstudio (focus on tidyverse)
Quantitative methods: Simple linear regression, multiple linear regression, nonlinear regression, etc.
Analysis with more than two variables (mokken scale analysis, cluster analysis, multiple correspondence analysis, etc.), text analysis
Educational Material Types
- Notes
- Slide presentations
- Interactive excersises
Course Organization
| Activities | Workload | ECTS | Individual | Teamwork | Erasmus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lectures | 39 | 1.4 | |||
| Laboratory Work | 40 | 1.5 | |||
| Reading Assigment | 95 | 3.5 | |||
| Tutorial | 10 | 0.4 | |||
| Written assigments | 91 | 3.3 | |||
| Total | 275 | 10 |
Student Assessment
Description
The students know what they should include in their essay. They are monitored during its preparation and constantly receive comments on how to improve it. For the weekly evaluation the criteria are communicated to students in advance.
Student Assessment methods
- Written Assignment (Formative, Summative)
- Oral Exams (Formative, Summative)
- Performance / Staging (Formative, Summative)
- Labortatory Assignment (Formative, Summative)
Bibliography
Additional bibliography for study
Achen, C. H., & Shively, W. P. (1995). Cross-level inference. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.
Anderson, J., Andreadis, I., Dumont, P., De Angelis, A., Fivas, J., Fossen, T., ... & Ladner, A. (2014). Matching Voters with Parties and Candidates: Voting Advice Applications in Comparative Perspective. ECPR Press.
Anderson, T. W. & Finn, J. D., (1996). The New Statistical Analysis of Data, Νέα Υόρκη, Springer.
Couper M. (2008) Designing effective web surveys Cambridge University Press Cambridge, UK
D. J. Bartholomew, F. Steele, I. Moustaki, J. I. Galbraith (2007) Ανάλυση πολυµεταβλητών δεδομένων για κοινωνικές επιστήμες, Επίκεντρο.
King, G. (1997). A solution to the ecological inference problem: Reconstructing individual behavior from aggregate data. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
King, G., Tanner, M. A., & Rosen, O. (2004). Ecological inference: New methodological strategies. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sue, V. M., & Ritter, L. A. (2012). Conducting online surveys. Sage. Thousand Oaks, CA, USA
Wickham, H., Cetinkaya-Rundel, M., & Grolemund, G. (2023). R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data. O’Reilly Media. https://r4ds.hadley.nz/
Χατζηπαντελής, Θ, & Ι. Ανδρεάδης (2005) Μαθηματικά στις Πολιτικές Επιστήμες, Εκδόσεις Ζήτη.
Last Update
04-07-2025
