POL 170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Response Bias, Subliminal Stimuli, Field Experiment
Document Summary
Political science in general relies on a lot of different research designs, including: Analyze news, for example, and the types of emotional appeals made in the news articles/shows/etc. Read the content, code for the appeals, systematically analyze the data. Go in with some general ideas, but you let the conversation flow on its own. Idea of sitting on freud"s couch and just free associating while he psychoanalyzes you. Watching/listening to people behave -- not intervening -- and reporting findings. In-depth interviews but with a small group of people. Also in politics -- run various ads by the focus group and see what they think. Need to observe what subjects do in a controlled setting in order to better understand mental processes (surveys, etc. are often unsuccessful at illustrating this) It is costly -- you have to take time, go to the polling place, educate yourself on the candidates.