Fundamentals of Social Research

POLS 201 is where you learn to think like a social scientist before you actually do social science: how to turn a vague curiosity about politics or society into a researchable question, and how to judge whether an answer is credible. You'll work through the major designs (surveys, experiments, content analysis, field/ethnographic work, secondary data) at a conceptual level, write a paper that walks through formulating a question and choosing a method, and sit a midterm and final on the logic behind it all. It's the methodological backbone for the upper-level POLS courses where you'll actually run studies and read empirical literature critically.