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Political Science Department

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    Internships

    Legislative internship. The application period for this internship runs from early September to early October. Students who are selected for the program are placed with an elected representative or senator in the State Assembly to intern through the legislative session, which coincides with the Spring semester at CSU-Pueblo. The POLSC 480 manual has information about expectations and assignments; it also has evaluation forms to be completed at midterm and the end of the semester. Students who are selected for the program must also fill out and submit to the Political Science Coordinator the legal form for unpaid internships that can be found here on the website of the CSU-Pueblo General Counsel.

    Other internships. Students who do internships and enroll in POLSC 480 for university credit should familiarize themselves with the POLSC 480 manual, which includes information about expectations and assignments; it also has evaluation forms to be completed at midterm and the end of the semester. Students who are selected for the program must also fill out and submit to the Political Science Coordinator the legal form for unpaid internships that can be found here on the website of the CSU-Pueblo General Counsel.  

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    Other forms

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    Professional development

    Advice for undergraduates - political science

    Chris Blattman

    Drew University graduates

    Advice for undergraduates - general

    Tankersley at WaPo 

    Careers post-political science degree

    What I did with my Political Science Degree (Ohio State) 

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    POLSC 250 Research methods

    Core content in POLSC 250 includes: 

    • Core concepts in analytical social science
      • omitted variable bias 
      • selection bias (compositional differences between groups (which is OV bias) or a selection bias in sampling, leading to an unrepresentative sample)
      • how to distinguish between causation vs. correlation
        • the importance of theory
        • the importance of research design, including experimental designs (with random assignment of the independent variable) and observational studies
    • Understanding the foundations of inferential statistics & how to interpret 3 types of tests. In each case, it is important to understand the difference between statistical measures of uncertainty and (estimated) substantive relationships.
      • t-tests
      • Chi-square
      • OLS regression (and its assumptions)
        • Statistic measures of uncertainty (t-statistics, F-test) vs. substantive relationships (betas, R-squares)
    • Uses of statistics:
      • Test a hypothesis against a null
      • Estimate the magnitude of a causal effect
      • Also: data analysis that is more exploratory in nature, to facilitate inductive
    • Basic SPSS
      • Creating interval-level variables (Transform --> Compute)
      • Creating nominal variables (Transform --> Recode into different variable)
      • Univariate: descriptive statistics, frequency tables, histograms, box plots
      • Relationships:
        • scatterplots (typically for interval x interval)
        • pearson's r (typically for interval x interval)
        • bar charts (one of the variables is nominal or ordinal) 
        • crosstabs (for 2 or 3 non-interval level variables)
        • mean difference tables (for interval-level x nominal)
        • OLS regression (interval-level dependent variables with multiple independent variables)
        • logit regression (dummy dependent variables)
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    Local Media

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    National Media

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    International Media

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    Government

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    Research Portals

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Political Science Department

Faculty and Staff

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