Political Methodology

Political Methodology is a fundamental component of modern Political Science. The Ohio State University’s political science field in Political Methodology includes a wide variety of courses and related programs. 

Specific areas of study include: regression, generalized linear models, causal inference, machine learning, AI tools, experiments, survey/questionnaire design, and time series analysis


Political Methodology Faculty

Alex Acs, Paige Bollen, Jan Box-Steffensmeier, Skyler Cranmer, Zuheir Desai, Chris Gelpi, Haifeng Huang, Ryan Kennedy, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Marcus Kurtz, William Minozzi, Tom Nelson, Julia Park, Jan Pierskalla, Amanda Robinson, Maria Silfa, and Nicole Yadon.

Emeritus: Herb Weisberg.


Courses

  • Quantitative Political Analysis series (I, II, III)
  • Survey and Questionnaire Design
  • Political Science Research Methods
  • Writing and Publishing in Political Science
  • Inferential Network Analysis
  • Foundations of Political Psychology
  • Text as Data
  • Experimental Design
  • Field Research Methods

Focus Field

All students must take PS 7551 (Methods of Quantitative Analysis: Elementary) and PS 7552 (Methods of Quantitative Analysis: Intermediate) as a departmental requirement. Everyone choosing a focus field in Political Methodology must also take PS 7553 (Maximum Likelihood) and two electives. The remaining hours of the program should be selected in consultation with relevant faculty. Students may also consider taking statistical methods courses taught in the OSU Departments of Statistics, Economics, Sociology, Public Policy, and Psychology among others.


Related Programs

Within OSU:

Outside OSU:

  • ICPSR: The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research in Ann Arbor, including its Summer Program
  • Summer training at The Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR) 
  • The EITM Summer Institute for modeling the empirical implications of theoretical models  
  • The Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis 
  • The Santa Fe Institute’s two-week Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science and four-week Complex Systems Summer School 
  • Summer course in Qualitative Research Methods at the London School of Economics

Recent Placements

Stony Brook University
Emory University
South Carolina University
Pennsylvania State University
University of Wisconsin
Michigan State University
University of Colorado - Boulder
George Washington University
JWAC - Joint Warfare Analysis Center
SSA - Social Science Automation
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