PR2000 is the second of three full-year modules – PR1000, PR2000 and PR3000 – which Politics and International Relations students take during each of their undergraduate years. PR1000 and PR2000 together provide an introduction to a range of approaches and methods commonly used in the study of Politics and International Relations and equip you with the skills to successfully study and analyse a wide range of political phenomena. 

The course is made up of 20 weekly sessions. You can expect each session to take up to 3 hours, in a mix of online and in-person activities, depending on the circumstances. The key elements of each 3-hour session will be: a live-streamed lecture (between 1-2 hours) and a lab session/seminar. The priority will always be to keep everybody safe, so you can expect some variation in the structure of the sessions as the weeks progress. 

The first part of the course deepens our understanding of quantitative methods, and how we can test different explanations with quantitative data. In this part of the course we will spend time in the labs and get hands-on practical experience of how to analyse quantitative data. In the second half of the course, we consider the strengths and limitations of experimental research and how experiments can be used to test causal hypotheses – both in theory and practice. Together, we go through the different stages of developing a research project and how these relate to each other.