This course will examine public opinion and assess its place in the American political system. The course will emphasize both how citizens’ thinking about politics is shaped and the role of public opinion in political campaigns, elections, and government.

The focus of this book is on using quantitative research methods to test hypotheses and build theory in political science, public policy and public administration. It is designed for advanced undergraduate courses, or introductory and intermediate graduate-level courses. The first part of the book introduces the scientific method, then covers research design, measurement, descriptive statistics, probability, inference, and basic measures of association. The second part of the book covers bivariate and multiple linear regression using the ordinary least squares, the calculus and matrix algebra that are necessary for understanding bivariate and multiple linear regression, the assumptions that underlie these methods, and then provides a short introduction to generalized linear models.

The book fully embraces the open access and open source philosophies. The book is freely available in the SHAREOK repository; it is written in R Markdown files that are available in a public GitHub repository; it uses and teaches R and RStudio for data analysis, visualization and data management; and it uses publically available survey data (from the Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-geographic Network) to illustrate important concepts and methods. We encourage students to download the data, replicate the examples, and explore further! We also encourage instructors to download the R Markdown files and modify the text for use in different courses.

Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration for Undergraduates: 1st Edition With Applications in Excel is an adaption of Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration (With Applications in R). The focus of this book is on using quantitative research methods to test hypotheses and build theory in political science, public policy and public administration. This new version is designed specifically for undergraduate courses. It omits large portions of the original text that focused on calculus and linear algebra, expands and reorganizes the content on the software system by shifting to Excel and includes guided study questions at the end of each chapter.

Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration for Undergraduates: 1st Edition With Applications in R is an adaption of Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration (With Applications in R). The focus of this book is on using quantitative research methods to test hypotheses and build theory in political science, public policy and public administration. This new version of the text omits large portions of the original text that focused on calculus and linear algebra, expands and reorganizes the content on the software system R and includes guided study questions at the end of each chapter.

This assignment is designed to introduce quantitative reasoning and critical thinking in viewing documentary videos on the issues of development. Students will write a review essay about one of three designated documentaries for the course.

Students will read an academic article critically and write a review of the article.

Queer and trans* Texans have faced scrutiny and precariousness for decades. But in 2022, a series of sweeping legal decisions, increasing economic inequality, and state-level political attacks very publicly threaten the safety and stability of many in Texas’s queer communities. This audio short explores how artists and activists across the state are making and using stages at pride celebrations to draw attention to the histories of and possible futures for queer and trans* people in Texas and beyond.

Archival audio of Sylvia Rivera speaking at the Gay Pride Rally June 24, 1973 at Washington Square Park, NYC courtesy of the LoveTapesCollective, with special thanks to the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

By using the death of Sarah Hegazi, a queer Egyptian woman who died in exile after being imprisoned and tortured in 2017, this audio brings into question the place that queer women occupy within the heteronormative carceral state and the tension that arises when these same nation states claim to support women. Furthermore, it interrogates the limit of state feminism in Egypt and questions how gender is mobilized to further carceral logics and institutions.

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) aimed to halt atrocities as they occurred and rebuild and reconstruct societies in the wake of such crimes. It represented the policy realization of the statement never again. Now a growing international norm, the R2P cuts to the core of what it means to be a moral player in the international arena. With contributions from many of the world’s most respected R2P experts and practitioners, this Edited Collection attempts to draw attention to the major points of contention that have been highlighted by the Western intervention in Libya following the Arab Spring.

This seminar looks at key issues in the historical development and current state of modern American criminal justice, with an emphasis on its relationship to citizenship, nationhood, and race/ethnicity. We begin with a range of perspectives on the rise of what is often called “mass incarceration”: how did our current system of criminal punishment take shape, and what role did race play in that process? Part Two takes up a series of case studies, including racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty, enforcement of the drug laws, and the regulation of police investigations. The third and final part of the seminar looks at national security policing: the development of a constitutional law governing the intersection of ethnicity, religion, and counter-terrorism, and the impact of counter-terrorism policy on domestic police practices.

This course explores the role of race and ethnicity in modern American politics. It focuses on social science approaches to measuring the effects of race, both at the individual level and more broadly. Topics include race and representation, measurement of racial and ethnic identities, voting rights and electoral districting, protest and other forms of political participation, and the meaning and measurement of racial attitudes.

Eisfeld is a rather unorthodox representative of political science. His pluralism is proved already by his multidisciplinary approach. According to Mattei Dogan’s and Robert Pahre’s Creative Marginality (Boulder 1990),
innovations mostly take place at the intersections of social sciences. This insight is pertinent to Eisfeld’s oeuvre: He has a strong interest in history and in the popular arts.

In this service learning project, students, teachers and community members will work together to design and construct a rainwater harvesting system for their school campus.

Research RWH design basics and local conditions
Explore how RWH could be used on your campus and develop a basic design.
Present findings and action plan to community partners, school administration and student body.
Enact the action plan to construct a RWH system on your campus and raise community awareness for water conservation

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This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"What leads to happiness? Although the answer largely depends on who’s asked, the World Happiness Index aims to more objectively pinpoint these factors. The index, calculated annually, ranks 157 nations in order of their relative levels of happiness. While the score identifies the countries assumed to be happiest, the characteristics of a happy country remain poorly defined. Now, research conducted at the Awareness Center in Denmark has revealed that more than money, health, or social support, the feeling that your native country is doing better than others is key to achieving sustainable bliss. This conclusion draws from a fresh look at the data used to calculate the 2016 World Happiness Index. The index scores seven so-called happiness indicators. The first six include money, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, charitable giving, and perceptions of corruption..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

The purpose of this book is to appraise the current relevance and validity of realism as an interpretative tool in contemporary International Relations. All chapters of the book are animated by a theoretical effort to define the conceptual aspects of realism and attempt to establish whether the tradition still provides the necessary conceptual tools to scholars. The chapters address important issues in contemporary world politics through the lens of realist theory such as the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East; the war against ISIS; the appearance of non-state actors and outlaw agents; the rise of China; cyberwarfare; human rights and humanitarian law. The collection also provides insights on some of the theoretical tenets of classical and structural realism. Overall, the collection shows that, in spite of its many shortcomings, realism still offers a multifaceted understanding of world politics and enlightens the increasing challenges of world politics.

This book exposes a much needed discussion on the interconnectedness between objects, organisms, machines and elemental forces. It seeks to disturb dogmatic ontologies that privilege human life and successfully questions the separation between the natural and human worlds. By doing so, the collection confronts, challenges, and energises discussion beyond International Relations’ traditional territorial lines. By revealing the fragility of mainstream narratives of the ‘human,’ each author in this collection contributes to an unsettling vision of a posthuman world. Questions of what the future beyond the Anthropocene looks like pervasively infiltrate the collection and move away from a system that all too often relies on binary relationships. In contrast to this binary view of the world, the book (re)entagles the innate complexities found within the world and brings forward a plurality of views on posthumanism.

This workshop presents selected primary sources from the
Rockefeller Foundation holdings at the Rockefeller Archive
Center. This collection is intended for use in facilitating a
classroom exercise on the Rockefeller Foundation’s
1933-1945 refugee scholar program. The exercise asks
students to consider what foundations can do in times
of global crisis by placing them in the role of Rockefeller
Foundation (RF) program officers during World War II. As
were the real program officers, students will be tasked with
selecting a limited number of scholar applicants for aid in a
life-threatening situation. Working in groups, students will
read documents related to ten scholars who represent
a variety of nationalities, backgrounds, and scholarly
disciplines. Students will then select four candidates, and
must be prepared to articulate the reasoning behind their
decisions. This exercise enables students to imagine and
grapple with the difficult choices RF officials had to make in
one historical example of how foundation philanthropy has
responded to humanitarian crisis. Students are encouraged
to use this exercise as a springboard for further research
into current scholar rescue initiatives, and/or policies
and practices pertaining to refugees today.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Change, as they say, is good. But can repeated structural change be bad? New research says that for public organizations, that could be the case. A look at the structural reform history of public organizations in Belgium reveals that repetitive reorganization is linked to employee absenteeism—possibly due to stress and anxiety bred by a culture of constant change. Over the past decade, reforms in the public sector have become exceedingly common—whether through mergers or acquisitions, the adoption of new tasks, or changes in legal status. The trend, it appears, is a response to increasing demands on public sector performance. But while an organizational pivot can often be beneficial, repeated change could actually do more harm than good. Experts have warned [organizations swamped with repetitive structural reforms] that staff could suffer from high levels of stress and anxiety—a process dubbed “repetitive change injury”..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

In this seminar, we will explore the significance of struggles over reproductive rights in the United States. Throughout the course, we will ask such questions as: What is reproductive freedom and why has attaining it been so central to women’s liberation movements? Why have attempts to regulate reproduction been so prevalent in American politics?