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Review of Thinking Like a Political Scientist: A Practical Guide to Research Methods

A number of available textbooks already cover the mechanics of political science analysis and/or social science statistics, useful for undergraduate, introductory methods sections (which most departments require). There are also good guides to the pitfalls and practicalities of conducting research, and W. Phillips Shively’s The Craft of Political Research remains an outstanding resource for senior thesis writers and early-stage graduate students. But these resources are predicated on the idea that students know what political science research is and why they would want to do it. Some of them do, but conveying the purpose and scope of the field usually becomes the implicit curriculum of many introductory courses. Without a resource to explain what it is we actually do, teachers are left on our own to figure out how to explain this and how to generate both an enthusiasm for the possibilities of political research and a healthy skepticism of its limitations. Christopher Howard’s Thinking Like a Political Scientist largely succeeds as a text that can help faculty explain to undergraduates what political science research consists of, why we do things the way we do, and what kinds of thinking underlie the research they will read. For instructors who seek to convey the importance of high-quality evidence, the need for good research design, and the limits of any method—quantitative or qualitative—this book may provide a useful companion to a more traditional methods textbook. For introductory courses, it gives an effective picture of what “critical thinking” looks like in practice and how to read for the discipline. The book is divided into halves, the first focused on “asking good questions” and the second on “generating good answers.” The first section is the most distinctive in its content, suggesting to students that their goal is to establish “Who cares?” (the literature review), “What happened?” (concepts, measures, and descriptives), and “Why?” (causal explanations). The second half of the book provides greater detail on how to configure a research design. The first two chapters in this section explain in more general terms what kinds of research design exist in political science and how researchers go about choosing cases. The final two chapters focus on ways of using evidence, with one devoted to document-based research designs and one devoted to quantitative approaches. Howard builds most of his writing around examples from published research, and the author shows an ability to reread these from the perspective of a student coming into none defined