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PLS301 - Greenberg

Political Science Research Methods

What is an Empirical Research Article?

Scholarly articles in the field of Political Science typically present the author(s)' attempt to test a thesis or explore a topic. One hallmark of a research article is that the authors discuss data which they have collected themselves for a study.

Research articles typically include these sections (not all articles include all sections; not all sections are labeled using these terms):

  • Abstract
  • Introduction/Literature Review
  • Method (Methodology/Experiment or Reseearch Design)
  • Results (Findings/Data)
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion (sometimes replaces Discussion)

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General Resources

These databases contain broad subject coverage which applies to many disciplines.