Students often ask similar questions. Previously, I would search my e-mail archives for answers I had provided to other students and forward those responses to any student with a similar question.

I’ve now chosen to write this post, and will regularly update it to address questions I receive from students and recommend relevant resources.

I aim to keep the list concise to ensure students don’t feel overwhelmed by a long list of resources.

Asking the “right” research question

Coming up with a question is easy. Just ask any five-year-old and they can provide you with dozens. Coming up with a good research question is much harder. What’s the difference? The difference … is that a research question is a question that can be answered, and for which having that answer will improve your understanding of how the world works. (Nick Huntington-Klein)

Ackerman, E. (2018). “Analyze this”: Writing in the social sciences (G. Graff, C. Birkenstein, & R. Durst, Eds.; pp. 187–205). W. W. Norton & Company.
Day, C., & Koivu, K. L. (2018). Finding the Question: A Puzzle-Based Approach to the Logic of Discovery. Journal of Political Science Education, 15(3), 377–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2018.1493594
Gustafsson, K., & Hagström, L. (2018). What is the point? Teaching graduate students how to construct political science research puzzles. European Political Science, 17(4), 634–648. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-017-0130-y
“Research Questions” section in Nick Huntington-Klein’s book, The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality. You can also watch it here.
Crafting Good Research Questions
Summary & Description vs. Analysis & Argument
Critical Thinking and Reflection
A short guide to critical writing

Methodology-related bibliographies

Causal Inference

Statistical Rethinking

A great book and even greater lectures by a top scholar, Richard McElreath.

There’s also a tidyverse translation of the book here by A. Solomon Kurz.

All the better, “rethinking” involves Bayesian approach to causal inference, rather than a frequentist one.

Regression and Other Stories

A great book by three legends of Bayesian Data Analysis: Regression and Other Stories by Andrew Gelman, Jennifer Hill, and Aki Vehtari. You can find free online pdf of the book, the code and data for the examples and more from the links.

Once you are done with this book, the next stage could be Bayesian Data Analysis by Andrew Gelman, John Carlin, Hal Stern, David Dunson, Aki Vehtari, and Donald Rubin. This book’s pdf is also freely available on their website.

Aki Vehtari also provide freely available course using this book. However, both BDA and Aki’s lectures are more advanced than Statistical Rethinking, and Regression and Other Stories.

Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer

Iconic Judea Pearl and colleagues tackle the most difficult question, causal inference in statistics, in this book in a succinct and effective way. As the subtitle of the book suggests, it can be a “primer” for the aforementioned books. From the preface of the book

… by avoiding discussion of causal models and causal parameters, introductory textbooks provide readers with no basis for understanding how statistical techniques address scientific questions of causality. It is the intent of this primer to fill this gnawing gap and to assist teachers and students of elementary statistics in tackling the causal questions that surround almost any non-experimental study in the natural and social sciences.

The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality

This book by Nick Huntington-Klein is more student-friendly I should say. It is a great introduction to econometrics with code examples in R, Stata and Python.

You can find the course lectures here.

Process Tracing

Bennett, A., & Checkel, J. T. (Eds.). (2014). Process tracing. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139858472
Cha, V. D. (2000). Abandonment, Entrapment, and Neoclassical Realism in Asia: The United States, Japan, and Korea. International Studies Quarterly, 44(2), 261–291. https://doi.org/10.1111/0020-8833.00158
Kuru, A. T. (2007). Passive and Assertive Secularism: Historical Conditions, Ideological Struggles, and State Policies toward Religion. World Politics, 59(4), 568–594. https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2008.0005

In addition to these, you can check out this bibliography that Raul Pacheco-Vega compiled.

Case Studies

George, A. L., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. MIT Press.
Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). Sage Publications.

In addition to these, you can check out this bibliography that Raul Pacheco-Vega compiled.

Systematic Literature Review

Batschauer da Cruz, C. B., Eliete Floriani, D., & Amal, M. (2020). The OLI Paradigm as a comprehensive model of FDI determinants: a sub-national approach. International Journal of Emerging Markets, 17(1), 145–176. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijoem-07-2019-0517
Campbell, A. C., & Neff, E. (2020). A Systematic Review of International Higher Education Scholarships for Students From the Global South. Review of Educational Research, 90(6), 824–861. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654320947783
Petticrew, M., & Roberts, H. (2006). Systematic reviews in the social sciences. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470754887
Sevin, E., Metzgar, E. T., & Hayden, C. (2019). The scholarship of public diplomacy: Analysis of a growing field. International Journal of Communication, 13, 48144837.

Other Bibliographies

See the thread by Raul Pacheco-Vega.

Also, see his blog for more tips on writing.

Writing a Journal Article

Writing is not a linear process, but it is also an intimidating to do every task required to write and publish a journal article. In, Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks, Wendy Laura Belcher divides writing into relatively more manageable tasks. I teach a graduate course using this book, and students seem to benefit from the book.

Tools

Literature review

Time-tracking

Clockify

Citation software

Nowadays I use Quarto for authoring and citations. It works well with CiteDrive and Zotero as well.

As for MS Word, I use Endnote, but I would recommend it only if you have institutional access to it (which Ewha does). Otherwise, there is no need to purchase the license.

Resources for R

R for Data Science by Hadley Wickham, Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, and Garrett Grolemund.

Hands-on Data Visualization

Data Visualization - Andrew Heiss

Course: Harvard on Edx - Data Science: R Basics

Hands-on-practice: Datacamp

For more free R books, see Dr. Mine Dogucu’s website