This module will give students the tools and confidence to understand, deconstruct and critique political science research papers. By encouraging participants to ground critiques of both quantitative and qualitative research in the framework and language of causation, the course hones vital skills for identifying hidden assumptions, weighing the strength of evidence and suggesting alternative explanations. The course also underlines the importance of making these critiques constructive by suggesting alternative research designs and a wide range of robustness checks. By the end of the course, participants will be confident contributing to peer review processes as colleagues, seminar participants or as journal referees, and will also gain new perspectives on how to design and execute their own research.

The course aims to systematize the types of critique we can make so that participants are able to provide multiple reasons why the account offered by an author might not be valid. While the course covers critiques of measurement, theory and modeling, we focus particularly on critiques of causation, including risks of selection, confounding and reverse causation, demystifying terms such as ‘counterfactual’, ‘complier’ and ‘external validity’.