Political Research: Methods and Practical Skills

Citation

Halperin, S., & Heath, O. (2025). Political Research: Methods and Practical Skills (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book has seventeen chapters in three parts and runs to 616 pages, of which the chapters occupy about 550. Part I treats the philosophy of social science, Part II is a step-by-step guide to designing a project, and Part III takes the main methods of collecting and analysing evidence in turn. The publisher describes it as a guide for politics and international relations students that supports them through the whole research process and covers quantitative and qualitative methods alike.

Chapter 1: Political Research

A 26-page opening that explains how empirical and normative research relate, distinguishes positivism from interpretivism and quantitative from qualitative research, and previews the three parts.

Chapters 2–3: Forms of Knowledge in the Study of the Social World; Objectivity and Values

Part I. Chapter 2 compares positivism, scientific realism and interpretivism and what each implies for research, applying a rational-choice and a constructivist reading to ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia. Chapter 3 asks whether facts and values can be separated, drawing on Kuhn's paradigms, Lakatos's research programmes and an example from the study of development.

Chapters 4–5: Asking Questions; Finding Answers: Theories and How to Apply Them

Part II begins with finding and formulating a research question: the difference between a topic and a focused question, the role of the literature review, the "research vase" visualisation and five question types. Chapter 5 turns to answers: theory, theoretical frameworks, hypotheses with independent and dependent variables, and conceptual and operational definitions, with a short section on normative questions.

Chapters 6–7: Research Design; What Is Data?

Chapter 6 compares experimental, cross-sectional, longitudinal, comparative and historical designs, discusses internal and external validity, surveys the data-collection options and sets out six ethical issues. Chapter 7 covers kinds of data, validity and reliability (illustrated by attempts to measure corruption), case selection, big data and a data-quality checklist.

Chapters 8–10: Experimental Research; Comparative Research; Historical Research

Part III opens with the steps of the classic experiment and laboratory, field and natural experiments. Chapter 9 covers case study, small-N and large-N comparison, Most Similar and Most Different Systems Designs, and qualitative comparative analysis. Chapter 10 examines historical institutionalism, process tracing and event structure analysis, and how to evaluate documentary and archival sources.

Chapters 11–14: Surveys; Interviewing and Focus Groups; Ethnography and Participant Observation; Textual Analysis

The qualitative-and-survey block. Chapter 11 addresses questionnaire design, sampling and measurement error; Chapter 12 concentrates on semi-structured interviews and focus groups; Chapter 13 on access, sampling and observational data in political ethnography; and Chapter 14 on discourse analysis and qualitative and quantitative content analysis.

Chapters 15–17: Quantitative Analysis: Description and Inference; Patterns of Association: Bivariate Analysis; A Guide to Multivariate Analysis

A statistics sequence that starts with summarising data, the mean and standard deviation, then inference and confidence intervals. Chapter 16 covers hypothesis tests, cross-tabulation, chi square and OLS regression with two variables, and Chapter 17 extends to statistical control and to OLS and logistic regression with several variables.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–7: Philosophy, Questions and Design

• Positivism, scientific realism and interpretivism: three answers to how the social world can be known, compared in Chapter 2.
• Research question and hypothesis: a focused question, and a proposition linking an independent and a dependent variable, from Chapters 4 and 5.
• Internal and external validity: the two forms of research validity of Chapter 6, with reliability added in Chapter 7.

Chapters 8–14: Methods of Evidence

• Most Similar and Most Different Systems Designs: the two ways Chapter 9 describes of choosing cases for small-N comparison.
• Process tracing: one of three approaches in Chapter 10 to the sequential unfolding of social action and events, alongside historical institutionalism and event structure analysis.
• Semi-structured interview: the interview form Chapter 12 emphasises.

Chapters 15–17: Quantitative Analysis

• Confidence interval: the margin-of-error idea introduced with inferential statistics in Chapter 15.
• OLS and logistic regression: the regression techniques of Chapters 16 and 17.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Method-by-method coverage under one roof. Ten chapters in Part III treat experiments, comparison, historical work, surveys, interviews, ethnography, text analysis and three levels of statistics, which allows a single book to serve a methods course.
• A full path from question to analysis. The order of Parts II and III follows the sequence of a project: question, theory and hypotheses, design, data, then methods.
• Philosophy tied to practice. Oxford's chapter abstracts show Part I using concrete examples, such as ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia and the study of development, instead of leaving epistemology abstract.
• Learning support. The publisher lists chapter summaries, self-test questions, flashcard glossaries, example datasets and videos of graduates describing their own research; the new edition adds a mixed-methods treatment in Chapter 6.

Limitations

• Length. At 616 pages, the book is more likely to be selected from than read straight through in a single course.
• Statistics stop at regression. The quantitative section ends with OLS and logistic regression, and the contents list no chapter on formal modelling or on more advanced quantitative techniques.
• Mixed methods inside the design chapter. The publisher locates the new mixed-methods content in Chapter 6, not in a chapter of its own, so a mixed-methods project may need further reading.
• No chapter on writing up. The contents list nothing on writing a dissertation or presenting results, although the book aims to equip students for independent research (individual chapters may touch on it).

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the research-methods books this is the broad practical textbook for politics and international relations students. Shively and Endersby's The Craft of Political Research is a short, nontechnical introduction that stresses the choices researchers make, and Kellstedt and Whitten's The Fundamentals of Political Science Research builds from causal theory to multiple regression; either gives a shorter first pass before this one. Halperin and Heath devote chapters to interviewing, ethnography, historical research and textual analysis, which the descriptions of those two books do not list.

Two other books go in different directions. King, Keohane and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry argues for a single logic of inference and is a book about that logic, not about individual methods. John Gerring's Social Science Methodology is a graduate-level treatment of concepts, descriptions, causal arguments and designs. Shepsle's Analyzing Politics concerns rational choice and formal theory, a subject for which this book's contents list no chapter.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for undergraduate students of politics and international relations, including those carrying out their first independent project. No methods training is assumed: the statistics chapters begin with basic descriptive measures. A plan:

• Everyone: Chapters 1 and 4–7, which cover the research process from question to data.
• Choose by method: one or two of Chapters 8–14 matching the project, for example Chapter 11 for a survey or Chapter 12 for interviews.
• Quantitative projects: read Chapters 15–17 in order, and use the example datasets to practise.
• Theory of knowledge: Chapters 2 and 3 are worth reading before a dissertation, though they are not needed to use the later chapters.
• Throughout: answer the section self-test questions and keep the chapter summaries as revision notes.