1. A.

What reasons do positivist/scientific/quantitative researchers give for following

their approaches to political science research? B. How does this differ from the
naturalist/interpretist/narrative/qualitative approach to political science research?

Positivist/scientific/quantitative researches believe that all knowledge must be

based on senses and that they need to be real. This differs from the
naturalist/interpretist/narrative/qualitative approach because it goes through the
process of mental reflection and is more in-depth and cannot be easily transferred
into numbers or quantities.

2. How does the phrase “value free” relate to research in political science?

This means conducting researches objectively and have no personal or

emotional attachment to the subjects, meaning that the subject of the research
should have no value to the person. Value free means that none of the knowledge
should come from the opinion or personal beliefs of the researcher, but should come
from objective results and observations. With this, more accurate data can be
obtained from the data gathering procedures. Therefore, they can produce theories
based on experiments rather than personal beliefs.

3. Define the institutional analysis research approach and give an example of a

political science research project using this approach.

Institutionalism refers to studying about formal institutions such as legal systems,

government, constitutions and how they change overtime usually by the
comparative method. This questions the policies, rules and conventions that
allow political institutions to function. Institutionalists’ goal is to answer how the
institution works and not how they should work. An example is Congressional
Government by Woodrow Wilson.

4. Define the behavioralist research…

Behavioralist research approach studies the political behavior of people in the

real world. Meaning, this kind of research approach does not only focus inside
laboratories and scientific experiments, but researchers do go out into the real
world to study people themselves. The basic research questions is “Why do
these individuals behave the way they do?” An example is William S. Verplanck’s
research in Naval Medical Research Lab during the Second World War.
5. Define the constructionist research approach…

Constructionism refers to the belief of researchers that they do not hold the idea
that the world of reality is out there but that humans construct all social
phenomena. They believe that humans construct their own social phenomena
and that no single construction is better than the other because they all have
their own ways of doing what they do. An example is when Hopwood (1983)
called for studies to examine accounting where he did different case and field
studies in different organizations.

6. Define the rational choice theory approach…

This refers to the study of how people make decisions. It believes that people
choose decisions where they think that they can benefit most from. Also that all
human behavior occurs for a certain purpose which they choose a rational
decision that gives them the greatest payoffs. This is a way of explaining human
behavior. An example is a research done by Orren and Skowronek where they
developed mathematical models to describe behavior in their application of the
rational choice theory.

7. Define the feminist research approach…

This approach to research is based on the belief that women see things
differently, have different ways of learning and different ways of describing
meaning compared to men. Feminist researchers study about the role of gender
in different events and issues such as politics, state formation, war and peace,
revolutions and more. An example is the research by Kurt Lewin.

8. Describe the post-modernist research approach…

The post-modern approach says that no single fundamental political truth exist,
there is not just one way of gaining knowledge, and that no rules guarantee
rationality because of a worldly and social difference. This approach says that
each event must be described individually, taking into consideration the
intentions of the actors, the experience of the investigator, and the external
environment of the time of the event. This approach was used in the Western
societies since the end of World War II.