PART I. INTRODUCTION Chapter 1. Research as a Process PART II. PREPARING TO DO RESEARCH Chapter 2. Explaining the Political World: Building Theories and Hypotheses Chapter 3. Developing Your Literature Review: What Others Say About Your Topic Chapter 4. Designing Your Research and Choosing Your Qualitative and Quantitative Methods Chapter 5. From Abstract to Concrete: Operationalization and Measurement Chapter 6. Experimental Research Methods Chapter 7. Who, What, Where, When: The Problem of Sampling PART III. QUANTITATIVE METHODS Chapter 8. Survey Research Chapter 9. Combining Multiple Measures: Using Scaling Techniques Chapter 10. Content Analysis Chapter 11. Studying Groups with Aggregate Data Chapter 12. Comparative Research PART IV. ANALYZING QUANTITATIVE DATA Chapter 13. Social Network Analysis: Finding Structure in a Complex World Chapter 14. Data Coding Chapter 15. Describing the Data Chapter 16. Statistics I: Summarizing Distributions on One Variable Chapter 17. Statistics II: Examining Relationships between Two Variables Chapter 18. Statistics III: Examining Relationships among Several Variables PART V. QUALITATIVE METHODS Chapter 19. Direct Observation Chapter 20. Focus Group Methodologies Chapter 21. Elite and Specialized Interviewing PART VI. CONCLUSION Chapter 22. Writing (and Reading) the Research Report Chapter 23. Summary Appendix A. Statistical Tables Appendix B. Ethical Standard in Empirical Research