Replication as a Pedagogical Approach to Teaching Undergraduates Qualitative Research Methods

Abstract

The importance of replication has been a major issue of discussion amongst political scientists for decades. However, in the last five years, the matter has gained greater traction, with many major journals adopting official standards for Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT). At the same time, scholars have suggested the pivotal role that replication might play in methods training for students. Unfortunately, these conversations have been somewhat limited, in that they place an emphasis on quantitative methods and training graduate students. This paper seeks to fill in this hole, offering commentary on the author’s experience introducing a qualitative replication project in an upper-division undergraduate course. The students in the course replicated Michael Ross’ (2004) influential paper on the resource curse, but the assignment framework can be adopted for a variety of topics and contexts.