In Writing a Research Paper in Political Science, author Lisa Baglione breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students precisely how to complete each component. The author provides encouragement at each stage and faces pitfalls head on, giving advice and examples so that students move through each task successfully. Students are shown how to craft the right research question, find good sources and properly summarize them, operationalize concepts, design good tests for their hypotheses, and present and analyze quantitative and qualitative data. Even writing an introduction, coming up with effective headings and titles, presenting a conclusion, and the important steps of editing and revising are covered. 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.
In this Third Edition, updated sample research topics come from American government, gender studies, comparative politics, and international relations. And now, more extensive materials are available on the web, including checklists and worksheets that help students tackle each step, calendar ideas to help them complete their paper on time, and a glossary.
Dr. Lisa A. Baglione is a professor in the
Department of Political Science and a member
of the International Relations Program at Saint
Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Currently,
Dr. Baglione also serves as the co-director of the
Gender Studies Program.
During her career, Dr. Baglione has conducted
research in five areas, and while they
are varied, she has benefited from the ways that
insights from each have interwoven: negotiations
between adversaries, authoritarian transformation,
peacebuilding, gender in politics, and
pedagogy. She has published two other books, To
Agree or Not to Agree: Leadership, Bargaining, and
Arms Control with University of Michigan Press
and Writing a Research Paper in Political Science:
A Practical Guide to Inquiry, Structure, and
Methods, now in its fourth edition, with Sage.